Re: script count?

Michael Everson wrote:

TWICE. Why are you sending me a duplicate of every message you send to
the qalam list? That certainly enhances the annoyance factor of your
postings.

> At 18:16 -0500 2003-12-11, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > > >It omits Syriac
> >>
> >> No it doesn't.
> >
> >Which of the 52 names that were posted do you claim stands for Syriac?
>
> Um, "Syriac", Peter. http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/bmp/ Row 07

Which of the 52 NAMES THAT WERE POSTED do you claim stands for Syriac?

If that list of 52 names was NOT, in fact, the list of names at the
"Roadmap," why was it said that they were?

> > > >and (apparently) Chinese,
> >>
> >> No it doesn't. It lists CJK Unified Ideographs.
> >
> >No, it doesn't.
>
> http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/bmp/ Row 4E

Ditto.

> > > >and lists Japanese three times
> >> >(Han "ideographs," hiragana, katakana),
> >>
> >> It doesn't. It doesn't list "Japanese" at all.
> >
> >No, it lists three separate "scripts" that together constitute most of
> >the Japanese writing system.
>
> That's what I said. It lists Hiragana and Katakana, two
> closely-related syllabaries with distinct usages, and CJK Unified
> Ideographs, of which a fairly small subset is used in writing the
> Japanese language.

Like I said, cockamamie.

> > > >puts a country name ("Myanmar") for a language/script name,
> >>
> >> At the request of the National Standards organization of the Union of
> >> Myanmar. Many of us didn't like that, but that's the name which was
> >> approved for the standard.
> >>
> >> >lists at least one auxiliary phonetic system (Bopomofo)
> >>
> >> Bopomofo is a script of its own.
> >>
> >> >but not another (IPA),
> >>
> >> IPA is the Latin script with extensions.
> >
> >The more you tell me about Unicode (never mind this ridiculous "Roadmap"
> >thing), the more cockamamie it seems.
>
> Then, with respect, sir, you haven't put in much work to learn about
> it. Unicode is *the* character set with which we will one day be able
> to record all of the recorded history of mankind, insofar as its
> writing systems are deciphered.

I won't be around any more then. Maybe it would have been better if
Microsoft had gone ahead and imposed some international system _without_
giving every government in the world a voice in it.

> Bopomofo is not Han. It has shapes which might be related, but it is
> used in a very different way, and in a specific context.
>
> The IPA is a set of extensions to the Latin alphabet. It would be a
> mistake to pretend that it is a separate script from Latin, because
> there is so much overlap between the basic Latin alphabet and IPA
> transcription. Further, many IPA transcriptions "graduated" to the
> status of natural orthography, for instance in Africa, and the
> lower-case IPA characters acquired upper-case forms.

One of the sources of IPA way back in 1888 was the symbology developed
by Koelle in the 1850s for African languages.

> > > >includes quite a few that are marginal at best and probably fully
> >> >obsolete -- in short, what's "the Roadmap"?
> >>
> >> It is a map of actual and proposed allocations to the Universal
> >> Character Set. It is an aid to the technical work of enabling people
> >> to write the world's writing systems with computers.
> >
> >Why is it called "Roadmap"? Did you come up with that before or after
> >the latest Mideast Peace Proposal with the same name?
>
> I developed the Roadmap years ago. The first reference to it in my
> inbox is November 1997, and it was already known well enough to cite
> by then.
>
> It's a Roadmap because the Unicode Project is a very big one, and
> there is much work to be done in order to finish encoding the scripts
> which we have yet to encode. The Roadmap helps us to do this. With it
> we are able to determine how much space we have and what can fit into
> it. We are able to use it in some way to prioritize the work we do.
> It shows what has been standardized, what has been accepted for
> ballotting, what has been proposed, and what hasn't had any work done
> on it at all. It is a useful tool, and it has a lot of scripts listed
> in it.

It is a product of bureaucracy, with all the efficiency of the League of
Nations.

> > >>>In addition, the status of Blissymbolics, Sutton Signwriting,and Braille
> > >>> is debatable.
> > >>
> > >>They're "scripts"?
> > >
> > >They are ordered collections of graphic elements used to convey human
> > >language in writing. Indeed they are worthy of study.
> >
> >Is that your definition of "script"? What language does Blissymbolics
> >convey? What language does Braille convey?
>
> It is not a formal "definition", no. It is description enough to
> explain to you why we want to encode them. Human beings use them to
> communicate with one another in writing.
>
> Charles Bliss' Blissymbolics language has its own grammar. On the
> ground that grammar is modified somewhat to suit the spoken languages
> used by the people communicating with the non-speaking people who
> communicate using Bliss. But Bliss is linguistically robust, and has
> been studied as a means for communication. In many ways it is
> superior to other "symbol systems" used with non-speaking people,
> precisely because it has grammatical functionality built into it.
> Interestingly, it could be said that it is truly ideographic, because
> no particular sounds are built into the characters. A text written by
> a Finnish Bliss user can be read by an English-speaking one without
> too much difficulty. Bliss has a non-trivial vocabulary and
> neologisms can be coined.

So whatever it is, it isn't a script. It's some sort of language
substitute that includes a visual component. It's Leibniz's ideal? It's
Eco's "Perfect Language"? Where's Bliss's Nobel Prize?

> Braille functions more or less as a cypher for other writing systems.
> It's not so "scriptlike" in that sense.

But you have no definition of "script(like)"? Yet you can definitively
say what is or isn't a script.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...