Re: Rare Writing Directions

From: Michael Everson (everson@indigo.ie)
Date: Tue May 27 1997 - 05:53:27 EDT


At 16:43 -0700 1997-05-26, John Jenkins wrote:

>There is a difference, however, in that the current bi-di algorithm is
>intended to handle living languages and the productive generation of new
>text. There are no scripts I can think of that are written boustrophedon.
>Here, the overhead of forcing Unicode implementations to handle it
>outweighs IMHO the minimal benefit the limited scholarly community
>interested in these scripts would gain. (Not to mention the fact that
>you're rarely going to have embedded alterations of direction, as you do
>now, and which is the main impetus for the bi-di algorithm.)

There is the additional question as to whether scholars don't normalize the
boustrophedon in their editions.

--
Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta
15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire (Ireland)
Gutháin:  +353 1 478-2597, +353 1 283-9396
http://www.indigo.ie/egt
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Co. Átha Cliath; Éire



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