Michael Everson wrote:

>
> 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.

In the glossary in the front, and in the first pages of the first
chapter.

> 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".

How many of each are with reference to script typology, and how many are
with reference to their native meanings of liturgical uses of scripts?

> >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

Then why did you say in effect "look it up" rather than "I don't know"?

> 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.)

You provided the URL for them; have you lost it?

> >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.

No, when suzmmcarth started complaining about typing Tamil and all the
Unicoders started talking about Unicode.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...