From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Mon Jun 07 2004 - 06:01:43 CDT
On 06/06/2004 07:55, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
> Scholars of Semitic languages do *not* have a monopoly on the heritage
> of ancient writing systems. There are other people in the world
> besides them (a few), and some of them wish to use Phoenician letters
> distinctly from Square Hebrew, and their desires and needs are *EVERY*
> *BIT* as important as those of your precious Semiticists. Note that
> some of these people you are treating as negligible are respected
> professors of the humanities, including the scholar of Semitic
> languages you dismiss below.
I never claimed that they had a monopoly, only that their views are
*EVERY* *BIT* as important as those of generalists and Indo-Europeanists
and must not be ignored. Indeed, more so, for as D. Starner writes, "The
people who use the script are the most important concerns", and it is
these scholars who use it regularly.
>
> The needs of the Semitic community must be taken into account, but so
> must the needs of others. It is preposterous to say that the needs of
> these scholars to have a single encoding outweighs the needs of others
> to have separate ones, since the scholars in question demonstrably do
> NOT need a single encoding: they've been managing okay without one for
> quite some time. Would it be nice if they didn't have to manage in
> that way? Perhaps, but not so nice as to deny other people their
> *legitimate* needs (how do I know it isn't that nice? Just because
> things have been working okay so far without a unique encoding, and
> there will not be a unique encoding in use by Semitic scholars for a
> *long* time, whether or not Phoenician is ever encoded).
Oh, come on Mark, drop this stupid argument. By the same principle, the
proposers of the Phoenician script "demonstrably do NOT need a [separate
script]: they've been managing okay without one for quite some time."
Indeed all people "demonstrably do NOT need [Unicode]: they've been
managing okay without [it] for quite some time." Yes, everyone has been
managing okay with a variety of legacy and hacked encodings, and if
pushed they can continue to do so. But the point of Unicode is to get
away from this kind of hacking and move to a unified scheme for
representing characters, based not on hacks but on principles such as
that "The Unicode Standard encodes characters, not glyphs" (TUS p.14).
This principle needs to be upheld. And while Michael is upholding it,
many of those who support him are in fact rejecting it, by arguing that
although in principle Phoenician letters are not separate characters
they should be encoded as a separate script.
>
> Please stop pretending that the scholarly world outside the Semiticist
> community is inconsequential in this regard, and that the needs of the
> Semiticist community are being ignored. They are also being
> considered, as they must be.
Well, I am glad to hear that they are being considered, although there
has been little sign that they are by the proposer. I am sure that they
are by UTC members.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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