--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:

> At 03:20 +0000 2005-08-08, suzmccarth wrote:
>
> >It is interesting to me that there is a similarity in the two
> >situations.
>
> I don't see any analogy between Cree and Vai at all.

In that they both have a phonemic orthography which some linguists
and institutions have preferred, and a traditional orgthography of
the primary script users with fewer distinctions.

> >I would like to hear Michael comment on what technical

complications

> >are present
>
> Please be precise in what you are asking for. "Technical
> complications being present" doesn't mean anything. What kind of
> complications?
>
> >when the 'chart' is so different from the inventory which script
> >users typically use.
>
> The inventory is a superset of characters in historical and modern

use.

Seeing the inventory as a 'superset' clarifies it a bit. I suppose
that decisions are made further down the line to choose the 'set'
for keyboards etc.

How does this contrast with other scripts in Unicode?

I realize that Chinese would have a 'superset'. However, in scripts
where the superset allows more than one way to write even very
common words it seems like it creates multiple ways to encode. I
suppose the onus is on another group to delineate the 'set' which
makes up a standard orthography.

Sorry to sound so imprecise but it seems that the situations where
there is a non-standardized orthography is quite different from the
standardized orthography situations.

Suzanne