Nicholas Bodley wrote (July 21):

> From extended looking at CJK, I've concluded that the forms they take
> are (probably subconsciously) designed to minimize mis-readings and
> unwanted similarities.

One would hope that's true of any writing system in actual use.

Some years ago I thought of designing a character set that would be
built from a small set of elements yet have some redundancy. I hit on
using six of the twelve segments of this grid:

-- --
| | |
-- --
| | |
-- --

Adding or deleting a segment makes a glyph invalid. Six out of twelve
gives 924 possibilities; discarding disconnected glyphs leaves 306,
plenty for a syllabary. The set could be further reduced to a subset
such that no two glyphs have five segments in common; I have not worked
out how many this allows.

--
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
"How'd ya like to climb this high *without* no mountain?" --Porky Pine