Digits in Unicode Names

From: Dean A. Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 06 2001 - 11:54:59 EDT


Greetings,

I am involved with the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding project, an
international scholarly project aimed at making a formal proposal to the
Unicode Consortium for the encoding of Sumero/Akkadian cuneiform, the
world's oldest writing system. ( http://www.jhu.edu/ice )

Right now I have a simple question:

Would it be possible, or even desirable, to amend the specification for
Unicode/10646 names to allow for the use of the 10 western digits in
Unicode/10646 names instead of having to spell out the numbers
alphabetically?

The reason for this is that in the, let's say, approximately 1200 characters
we will propose, maybe 2/3 of them have names ending in numbers in order to
differentiate them from other characters with the same names. [And yes,
these are really different characters in the Unicode sense.]

We are faced with sequences like GAR1, GAR2, ... GAR19 (this is how
cuneiformists refer to these characters), and GAR NINETEEN seems to be too
cumbersome a convention to appear in so many characters.

Is there a technical reason for this limitation?

Respectfully,

Dean A. Snyder
Senior Information Technology Specialist, Humanities
Research and Instructional Technologies, 167 Krieger Hall
School of Arts and Sciences, 426A Gilman Hall
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA 21218
410-516-6021 office
410-961-8943 mobile
410-516-5508 fax
dean.snyder@jhu.edu email



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