From: Jim Allan (jallan@smrtytrek.com)
Date: Wed Jun 04 2003 - 12:34:01 EDT
Philippe Verdy posted:
> Without such use, let some freedom to scholars, as their mutual
> agreements (and the fact that they are the only authorities for that
> language) is perfectly valid (Unicode prohibitions should only concern
> the case where it creates interoperability problems, but PUA will cause
> much more problems than a use of an approximate mapping to Unicode
> characters whose semantics best match the character to represent).
Indeed.
Long before Unicode it has been convention for the Old English letter
_ƿ_ (U+01BF LATIN LETTER WYNN) to be represented by _w_ in most editions
of Old English texts and in dictionaries of Old English.
Perhaps this was originally a kludge, but it is so common that printing
of wynn in extended text would probably be seen today by many as a
pedantic affection.
For Middle English texts it is customerary for various squiggles and
signs used as abbrevations to be expanded into the modern letters which
they represent but to be printed in italics to indicate they are
expansions. Those who know the abbreviation symbols can therefore
recreate in their minds the original text.
There was discussion on this list earlier about Cakchiquel letters.
Peter Constable produced on the SIL site a page indicating the way in
which scholars have represented these letters substituting characters
more easily available. See
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=RecentCuatrilloUse
William Overington suggested at
http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2003-m03/0514.html that the
PUA should be used to encode them in standardized positions.
David Starner gave a rebuttal at
http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2003-m03/0515.html,
preferring substitution of characters currently available in Unicode.
It is not unusual in books or articles containing quotes from older
linguistic practise that a passage will be produced with remarks that
special characters have been replaced by corresponding characters more
familiar in modern use.
Scholars do such things, and will continue to them. Even if the proper
characters are available in Unicode editors may wish to substitute more
familiar variations for ease of readibility.
Jim Allan
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