* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| I know that the Latin alphabet descends from the Greek one, but that
| doesn't make them one script.
* Michael Everson
|
| Latin was derived from Etruscan, not Greek.
I know. Note the choice of words. Latin descends from Greek, just as
it does from the Northern Linear Abjad. Its immediate parent is
Etruscan, but unlike parenthood descendancy (if there is such a word)
is transitive.
| You and Peter are talking on two entirely different levels of
| abstraction, and it is getting tiresome because no one is getting
| anywhere!
Well, that debate is over now.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Well, to me those are completely different things. Are there any
| classifications of scripts that are not historically based, but only
| based on the properties of the scripts?
* Michael Everson
|
| What good would that be? I'm siding with Peter on this. The taxonomy
| is useful because it helps us understand how writing arose, how it
| changed, and how people using various scripts comprehend the
| segments and other things.
Then we are talking past each other, I guess. To me having a
classification based on the properties of scripts rather than their
history means that one classifies them based on how they work, and not
on what other scripts they descend from. This way one can call both
Cirth/Angerthas and Deseret alphabets, even though they have no common
ancestor. Whether this is different from what you propose I am not
sure.
| An historical classification helps us understand the relation
| between scripts, which helps us understand the history of the spread
| of writing, influence from neighbouring writing systems, and other
| things. Calligraphy, palaeography ductus, and all sorts of other
| things are brought to bear here, and it helps us design new fonts
| and so on.
|
| This is historical and it is interesting.
I agree. That's what I tried to do with the category system on the
site, which relates scripts by their "genetic" relationships.
| What would a classification based on "script properties" entail, and
| why would it be interesting?
I tried to describe it above. Let's see if it's different from what
you advocate before I try to explain why I think it's worthwhile.