From: Don Osborn (dzo@bisharat.net)
Date: Fri Nov 24 2006 - 12:39:18 CST
Hi Stephane, With all due respect your assessment of the usage of N'ko is
not well informed. It has a significant and growing usership on the local
level esp. in upper Guinea but in other countries as well. Activists there
are, but more than a few. As a movement it has been described most recently
by Diane Oyler (The History of the N'ko Alphabet and its Role in Mande
Transnational Identity: Words as Weapons, Cherry Hill, NJ: Africana
Homestead Legacy Press, 2005; see also an earlier article at
http://www.kanjamadi.com/n'koliteracy&guinea.html ).
On the other hand it is not an official script, nor is it the only script
used for Manding languages (so the map that António called to our attention
at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:WritingSystemsoftheWorld2.png should
probably represent the area of N'ko usage with a crosshatch of two
colorings). On the other hand the N'ko script is apparently used to a very
limited degree for some other languages.
On the issue of "widespread" as a condition for encoding in Unicode, if
indeed this were adopted, it might rule out scripts of local and historic
importance like Vai, Mende Kikakui, and Bamum.
I won't get into the rest of the debate but thought I should offer this
info...
Don
> -----Original Message-----
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On
> Behalf Of Stephane Bortzmeyer
> Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 6:17 AM
> To: Doug Ewell
> Cc: Unicode Mailing List
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Creative commons' license symbols
>
...
>
> AFAIK, that would be a *big* policy change for Unicode. Until now, you
> just needed to demonstrate an actual *use*. Now, you would need to
> demonstrate a *widespread* use? Such an policy, applied a few years
> ago, would have seriously reduced the size of the Unicode set.
>
> For instance, N'ko would never have been encoded (it is just used by a
> few activists).
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