Re: Soyombo empty letter frame

> On Jan 4, 2017, at 8:54 PM, Mark E. Shoulson <mark_at_kli.org> wrote:
>
>> On 01/04/2017 04:18 PM, eduardo marin wrote:
>> The Soyombo proposal is beautiful, but it is missing a very important character in my opinion: http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15004-soyombo.pdf
>>
>> Encoding an empty letter frame will allow for its proper description in plain text (as it is clear in the proposal itself), it could be used as an stylized cursor in text processors and also we could make zwj sequences such that combining with consonants makes it only render the nucleus.
>
> According to the proposal:
>
> In the proposed encoding a combination of frame and nucleus is considered an atomic letter.... This approach enhances the conceptualization and identification of letters in the script; for instance, the letter ‘ka’ refers inherently to the fully-formed (X) and not to the nucleus (X).
> In other words, they are explicitly rejecting the model considering the "frame" as an item in its own right. I realize that you are not calling for redefining all the letters in terms of frame+nucleus, but encoding the frame seems to be something the proposers deliberately decided against doing. In calling for encoding the frame (and why just one frame? Wouldn't you want both the "closed" and "open" ones?), I think you really are going against what seems to be a design principle of the proposers. Which of course you are completely entitled to do: just that you probably are better off talking it over with the proposers directly, to learn their thinking and so they can learn yours.
>
> ~mark

As the author of the Soyombo proposal, I should like to say that I did indeed consider proposing the two frames for encoding as "pedagogical" characters. I did not mention the possibility of such in the proposal, but the present discussion persuades me to reinvestigate the issue. I'd be happy to hear the opinion of others.

All the best,
Anshuman
Received on Wed Jan 04 2017 - 20:31:38 CST