Fwd: Obsolete characters

From: Howard Gregory (keramoti@googlemail.com)
Date: Fri Jan 16 2009 - 11:20:26 CST

  • Next message: Mark Davis: "Re: Obsolete characters"

    Maybe not in the Greek equivalent of the NY Times, but certainly in
    the Greek equivalent of a passage from Shakespeare, never mind
    Scripture. This is not comparable, it seems to me, to the incidence of
    uses of thorn, eth and the like.

    On 16/01/2009, Mark Davis <mark.edward.davis@gmail.com> wrote:
    > I want to make sure that I understand your sense of 'necessary'. Clearly
    > these characters are necessary for some usages, but the question is whether
    > they are in customary modern usage.
    >
    > For example, if I picked up the Greek equivalent of the NY Times, or the
    > Economist, (and so on) would I find a Ϙ or Ϡ in it, for example? Or would
    > such usage be exceedingly rare, similar to the incidence of uses of archaic
    > English characters for Anglo-Saxon words in such publications, like "Se
    > Romanisc Senatus giefþ tō Gaius Octavius þone tītule Augustus."
    >
    > Mark
    >
    >
    > On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 04:15, Apostolos Syropoulos
    > <ijdt.editor@gmail.com>wrote:
    >
    >>
    >>
    >> 2009/1/15 Mark E. Shoulson <mark@kli.org>
    >>
    >>> Mark Davis wrote:
    >>>
    >>>
    >>> U+03D8 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D8> ( Ϙ ) GREEK
    >>> LETTER ARCHAIC KOPPA
    >>> U+03D9 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D9> ( ϙ ) GREEK
    >>> SMALL LETTER ARCHAIC KOPPA
    >>> U+03DA <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DA> ( Ϛ ) GREEK
    >>> LETTER STIGMA
    >>> U+03DB <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DB> ( ϛ ) GREEK
    >>> SMALL LETTER STIGMA
    >>> U+03DC <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DC> ( Ϝ ) GREEK
    >>> LETTER DIGAMMA
    >>> U+03DD <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DD> ( ϝ ) GREEK
    >>> SMALL LETTER DIGAMMA
    >>> U+03DE <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DE> ( Ϟ ) GREEK
    >>> LETTER KOPPA
    >>> U+03DF <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DF> ( ϟ ) GREEK
    >>> SMALL LETTER KOPPA
    >>> U+03E0 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03E0> ( Ϡ ) GREEK
    >>> LETTER SAMPI
    >>> U+03E1 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03E1> ( ϡ ) GREEK
    >>> SMALL LETTER SAMPI
    >>>
    >>> Aren't (some of) these still in common use in Greece for representing
    >>> numbers?
    >>>
    >>
    >> I am Greek and I can assure you that all these symbols are necessary. The
    >> following
    >> symbols are not really necesary:
    >>
    >> U+03D0 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D0> ( ϐ ) GREEK
    >> BETA SYMBOL
    >> U+03D1 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D1> ( ϑ ) GREEK
    >> THETA SYMBOL
    >> U+03D5 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D5> ( ϕ ) GREEK
    >> PHI SYMBOL
    >>
    >> They are typographic variants, but the following two are not just
    >> typographic variants,
    >> thus, they are needed:
    >>
    >> U+03D6 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D6> ( ϖ ) GREEK
    >> PI SYMBOL
    >> U+03D7 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D7> ( ϗ ) GREEK
    >> KAI SYMBOL
    >>
    >> A.S.
    >>
    >> --
    >> Apostolos Syropoulos
    >> 366, 28th October Str.
    >> GR-671 00 Xanthi, GREECE
    >> Web-page at
    >> http://obelix.ee.duth.gr/~apostolo>
    >> Blogs at
    http://asyropoulos.wordpress.com/
    >> http://hypercomputation.blogspot.com/
    >>
    >

    -- 
    H.A.O.Gregory
    Department of English Linguistics
    Kaete-Hamburger-Weg 3
    37073 Göttingen
    http://www.gwdg.de/~hgregor1/
    -- 
    H.A.O.Gregory
    Department of English Linguistics
    Kaete-Hamburger-Weg 3
    37073 Göttingen
    http://www.gwdg.de/~hgregor1/
    


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