Re: Unicode definitions of script types

For the sake of discussion, I am assuming that "abugida" and "abjad"
as they are defined somewhere (what page, please?) in WWS, are what
you are talking about.

At 16:31 -0400 2004-07-11, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > Because you are the one that assumes that it was the precise
> > definitions in your book which were the basis
>
>There was no other possible source for them, since I introduced them
>into the literature and they had not yet been taken up by any other
>author

There are currently 1,530 instances of the word "abugida" on the
internet, according to a simple Google search. There are 14,200
instances of "abjad".

>at the date, which you refused to provide, when those definitions
>were rewritten.

Please try to be less offensive. I haven't "refused to provide"
anything. I do not know the "date" that a Unicode glossary appeared
with the term (for instance) abugida in it. It isn't my function to
know that; my specialty is doing the encoding, and writing
descriptive text about the writing systems. I suspect that it is Dr
Ken Whistler who wrote the first drafts of the definitions which you
believe are incorrect.

(Please cite the definitions which you believe to be incorrect.)

>I don't, actually, know of anyone but Steven Roger Fischer who has
>used them as if they were familiar knowledge, and they appear in the
>ToC of Hank Rogers's forthcoming Blackwell textbook which,
>thankfully, is replacing Coulmas's. No more than the ToC, however,
>is yet available.

The two terms "abugida" and "abjad" are well attested on the web, in any case.

> > Because you have yet to show us, by quoting the Unicode definitions
> > alongside your own to show us exactly how YOUR definitions have been
> > distorted. And no, sir, I'm not going to do that work for you. You're
> > the one doing the complaining that YOUR definitions aren't being
> > respected.
>
>When did qalam, a list for the discussion of writing systems, turn into
>a list for the discussion of Unicode? I thought it had its own list.

Why, when *you* started criticizing the Unicode "distortions" of
whichever definitions of yours (precise text, please) you are
concerned about.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com