Michael Everson wrote:

>
> At 09:40 -0400 2005-08-14, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >>Typically, Ogham fonts with a stemline include bits of the stemline
> >>on either side of the letter -|||- so that the letters can join
> >>together. Your fonts don't, which means that you would have to type
> >>an inter-letter stemline in order to get the words not to run
> >>together. That means that you can't type Ogham text (in the sense
> >>of something you could search for correctly on the internet for
> >>example) with your font, because instead of searching for MUCOI you
> >>would have to search for M-U-C-O-I.
> >
> >You're wrong. If you don't know what you're talking about, you shouldn't
> >talk.
>
> Well, let's see.
>
> "Typically, Ogham fonts with a stemline include bits of the stemline
> on either side of the letter -|||- so that the letters can join
> together."
>
> I'm not wrong about this. Typically, Ogham font glyphs *do* include a
> stemline on either side of the strokes of the letter. In this way you
> can type two letters next to each other and they don't run together.

I really don't care what "Typically, Og[]am font glyphs *do*," and I
obviously did not suggest you were wrong about these alleged "typical"
fonts.

> "Your fonts don't [include bits of the stemline on either side of the
> letter], which means that you would have to type an inter-letter
> stemline in order to get the words not to run together."
>
> Are you saying that your fonts *do* include such a stemline? They
> certainly do not in the chart on page 341. Indeed, if you look at
> page 344, you find that initial Q, C, S, L, N, M, and D do not have a
> stemline attached to them, as can be seen by the tiny space between
> them and the following letter.
>
> I assumed that your font used the letters as on page 341, and that to
> string them together with a stemline, you inserted an additional
> stemline character between each letter to get them to link up. Of
> course, if your font does not do that, it is likely that it has both
> shapes with the stemline and shapes without them.
>
> If either of these analyses are incorrect, perhaps you will enlighten
> us as to the encoding structure of your font.

You're free to purchase a copy for examination.

> >>The Unicode encoding for Ogham assumes that each letter will have
> >>its stemline inherent in the font glyph so that the letters attach
> >>correctly; there is also an OGHAM SPACE MARK which would have the
> >>shape of a stemline can be used between words. [...]
> >
> >I really don't give a damn what "The Unicode encoding for Ogham
> >assumes." It was not available to me at the time.
>
> I was not criticizing you for not using Unicode fonts in the
> preparation of WWS. I was pointing out that because Ogham fonts make
> use of an inherent stemline, a stemline-space-mark has been
> introduced to permit word separation without breaking the stemline. I
> was also not criticizing you for breaking the stemline in WWS, since
> the examples benefit from the breaking of the stemline.
>
> This encoding structure is also followed in the Irish Standard for
> 8-bit Ogham fonts.
>
> >Nowadays, anyone in the world could reproduce much of the content of
> >WWS with an off-the-shelf OS. In 1993, that was not an option.
>
> Yes, and I am pleased to point out that much of that can be done
> because of the work I have been doing for more than a decade, to
> encode minority and lesser-used scripts in the Universal Character
> Set.

I wonder how much of your work is the work that turns out to be the
subject of intense complaint and criticism from those who try to use it.

> > > Damian is, however, incorrect in his use of the
> > > word boustrophedon here, and I would have no problems telling him so.
> > > A boustrophedon text has a line-break where the directionality of the
> > > text is reversed. That isn't the case in Ogham. As I said, a text may
> >> begin on one side of a stone, go up over the top and down the other
> >> side, but that is still as single line of text. There is no
> >> line-break -- no field-ploughing, so to speak -- so boustrophedon is
> >> not the correct term.
> >>
> > > I would also query Damian's description of the arrowhead as a "word
> >> separator". Typically, the arrowheads are used more or less
> >> decoratively on either end of a word or phrase.
> >>
> > > And yes, I consider myself an expert on Ogham. I do not venture to
> >> compare myself with Damian, but I have no problem disagreeing with
> > > him where he appears to be imprecise or in error.
> >
> >And have you published your great insights in, say, a journal of Celtic
> >studies?
>
> I cannot imagine what journal of Celtic studies would bother to
> publish a note about Damian's use of the word boustrophedon in a book
> about writing systems. My point, however, is that Damian's use of the

Is that the extent of your "expertise"?

> word to characterize Ogham writing is incorrect. because a
> boustrophedon text has a line-break where the directionality of the
> text is reversed, and that behaviour does not occur in the Ogham
> corpus. Up-over-and-down in a single line of text is not
> boustrophedon.

So has your idiosyncratic interpretation of this word found its way into
the "Unicode glossary" the way someone's idiosyncratic -- entirely
screwed up -- interpretation of "abugida" and somewhat screwed up
interpretation of "abjad" did?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...