Peter,

I respect your work. I consider D&B to be one of the bibles I use in
my work; it has been of immense use to me. I believe -- absent
civilizational collapse -- that the work I have done to encode
scripts in Unicode will be used for centuries, and much of that work
depends on what D&B has taught me. Your work has found practical
applications, which is a Good Thing.

The tone of discussion on this list has ranged from adversarial to,
well, a bit snotty, of late. For my part I count this as just part of
the richness of discourse of smart human beings. I disagree with you
on some points, but I consider you a colleague and ally; I hope you
consider me the same. There *are* differences in the things we do: we
describe writing systems, we theorize about the nature and
classification of writing systems, and we try to take the knowledge
we derive from studying writing systems and put it into practical
implementation so that people who want to *use* those writing systems
on computers can do so.

I think that most of the clashes we are having hang upon difference
in terminology.

Even if occasionally acrimonious, these discussions are useful for us
all. If we disagree, let us do so, but let us try to know why. In any
event, let us endeavour to avoid falling out.

I trust that you will take this declaration on my part at face value.
I don't like sniping for its own sake.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com