Re: What works (was Re: Hangul script type)

On Wed, Nov 14, 2001 at 11:02:48AM -0700, John Jenkins wrote:

>
> On Wednesday, November 14, 2001, at 10:15 AM, william bright wrote:
>
> > i'm surprised how often the present correspondence refers to tolkien
> > scripts and other scripts invented by philologers (which tolkien was) or
> > linguists or hobbyists, for fun or for experimental purposes rather than
> > for practical use. surely there is very little limit to the typological
> > characteristics of scripts invented by imaginative people. but what is
> > interesting *to me* at least is: what characteristics of scripts WORK for
> > communication in human societies?

To me, what works isn't interesting. Looking at the range of human
communication, pretty much anything will work, and is being used. Did
the Canadian Syllablary/New Yi/Cyrillic become used because they were a
good scripts, or because they happened to be in the right place at the
right time pushed by the right people?

The question is, what works well? I don't see why conscripts are any
worse than any other script for answering this question, as John showed
below.

> In the case of Deseret, there are no descenders or ascenders. Except when
> a word is capitalized, each word is rectangular, which makes it hard to
> distinguish words without parsing them.

This is the same flaw as Cyrillic has, isn't it? And Cyrillic's one of
the world's four large 'international' scripts (Chinese, Latin, Cyrillic
and Arabic).

--
David Starner - dstarner98@...
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
"I saw a daemon stare into my face, and an angel touch my breast; each
one softly calls my name . . . the daemon scares me less."
- "Disciple", Stuart Davis