From: Shawn Steele (Shawn.Steele@microsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jun 04 2010 - 11:34:31 CDT
> It really IS a factor, when most users use it instead of the original
> script (this is especially true for Klingonists).
There is content which is not transliterated to Latin. Not that you couldn't transliterate it if you want, but there is content which isn't automagically mirrored in Latin. I don't know how much, but it exists. Of course, we have a tool to transliterate Cyrillic to Latin as well.
To me, the question is "do people want to use this script?" The answer is clearly "yes", and, although the numbers aren't high, it's not just one guy and a friend or two, but rather a small community of weirdos.
There are things encoded in Unicode that are never used, or rarely used. There are encodings for old scripts to record ancient documents where a photo might be better because it's hard to read from age or whatever. Symbols & Emoji are whims of some font developer (and everyone sort of agrees they're bad, but they exist).
It can't really be that it's a "constructed" script. All scripts were constructed at some point, and some constructed quite deliberately, even "recently" by historical standards. Even those legible only by a single group of users, who can probably read another script. Those have been encoded.
The only "real" difference that I can see is that Klingon, Tengwar, and Cirth are used "for fun," whereas Unicode encodes scripts that are used "for serious purposes", like business, 'real' communication, religion, and scientific/linguistic research into dead languages. Of course there are symbols and Emoji, but those were ferociously fought against and only reluctantly admitted.
Obviously Unicode can't encode any script any person invents, and, obviously, some have reached a threshold where they are adopted, but others haven't. That's a reasonable barrier. However pIqaD has been around for 15 years?, and has traction amongst disparate people, not just one guy and a couple buddies. It's unlikely that a 15 year requirement with some adoption would cause so much noise as to pollute Unicode with invented scripts. Certainly there's far more garbage already in Unicode than the few code points pIqaD would take.
Tengwar and Cirth would seem to have a better case, perhaps, though it's odd that one dude can invent two scripts and another community couldn't get one :)
Obviously I'm not speaking for my company,
-Shawn
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