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

>. The list of technical documents
> at http://www.evertype.com/formal.html is a corpus of work

which has

> involved the analysis of many writing systems for encoding, so

that

> they can be used in the context of the Universal Character Set.

I wrote my thesis on how the Cree encoding came to be what it
now is.

The Cree unicode characters came from one community where
university linguists from a varitey of instituions were working. In
this community Cree literacy was little used.

In other communities, Cree literates were reluctant to talk to
linguists and non-natives in general. They are the big users of
the script but their concept of how the script works was not
encoded. They use pointing in much the same way it is used in
Hebrew.

So it is what happens *before* the writing system gets near
Unicode that concerns me. However, individual communities are
working through the issues now.

>Most people learn to type with some sort of
> chart next to their desk.

That is how Tamil works, and Weiben mentioned the chart for
Pinyin. So in a way I am just talking about how to make the chart
into an onscreen tool or somehow making it interactive and
intuitive. It is fundamental that writers be able to chose the
actual Vai symbol that they want.

Suzanne