From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Sun Nov 09 2003 - 13:41:25 EST
At 19:30 +0100 2003-11-09, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>So my question is, once again: would a font that would display pointed Latin
>glyphs from Tifinagh script code points really break the Unicode model?
Yes, Philippe. It is the same thing as mapping Cyrillic to ASCII
letters. It is a hack. It is to be avoided. It is the Wrong Thing To
Do.
>If not, then we have a convenient way to define Tifinagh keyboards /
>input methods based on this _apparent_ transliteration.
This has nothing to do with encoding. You are harkening back to the
hideous world of 8-bit font hacks of twenty years ago.
>This still requires a specific mapping to codepoints in the keyboard
>driver when set to input for Tifinagh, allows editing with a set of
>glyphs that a user can read, and then render it transparently with a
>real Tifinagh font.
You are confusing character encoding, font, and input method.
>This would be a great tool for example on web site: the same text or
>web page could be displayed with the Latin glyphs or with the
>historic Tifinagh glyphs, by only selecting a distinct font.
Of course. We don't need the Georgian or Armenian alphabets any more
either. Just make everything a glyph representation of Latin.
>So a page in Berber would be composed once, and readable from both
>communities that can read either the Latin script or the Tifinagh
>script, and there would be now no need to use one of the many kludge
>conventions that exist for that language when presenting contents in
>Berber (notably for those pages that are coded with a mix of Latin
>letters, Greek letters, or symbols like dollar and asterisk...
I am appalled. I thought you understood something about Unicode, Philippe.
-- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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