<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Yes, Marwarn, I agree that we should indeed stop here. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The vertical text that you produce is nothing even close to what could have been an ancient Egyptian vertical text, even less a ’nice example’ (or was it ironic?). </div><div class="">If you want to produce such texts for you own purposes, that’s fine, but for rendering ancient texts that is not an option. (and as I said during the meeting, converting a hieroglyphic text from vertical to horizontal is not an easy business, it implies interpretation and restructuring).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">As such, counting the number of groups makes little sense (minimally, p-w should be p*w; i-n should be i*n, iyA would imply 2 groups + A1, etc., etc.; etc.) and won’t lead to any firm conclusions in terms of what are the best options for Unicode.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">So I’d rather stop here and wish you all the best for your future work on ancient Egyptian.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Stéphane</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">Le 24 juil. 2016 à 18:15, Marwan Kilani <<a href="mailto:odusseus@gmail.com" class="">odusseus@gmail.com</a>> a écrit :</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">Just one comment:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word" class=""><div class="">And all the parallels from other scripts are pointless (and admittedly funny in the framework of this discussion), since none of these scripts are based on a quadratic structure that is close in any respect to Egyptian. </div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Funny to read such a comment while at that meeting in Cambridge a Japanese linguist and Egyptologist explained, by referring to scientific publications, that Japanese (and chinese and korean) are indeed based on quadratic structures that are indeed very close in many respect to Egyptian.<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">There were many things that could be said as a reply to your email, but let be honest: with these premises, it won't make any sense.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">p.s.:</div><div class="">No, actually, i am going to add something:</div><div class="">Look what happens (image 1 below) if you cut your ramesside line in small columns (which is just a way of analyzing the text, as it is yours taking them as groups, but as we are not egyptians it is not "truth", it is not and don't want to be the "true nature of the text"), I was saying: Look what happens (image 1 below) if you cut your ramesside line in small columns and you put them one under the other..</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Such a nice example of Egyptian vertical text, isn't it? :-)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">And now, count how many groups you would need to compose such a text with a vertical font within a vertical layout.</div><div class="">You can see the result in the second image: the groups you will need are marked in green: 7 groups. That's all.</div><div class="">Note that you will not need to combine the D snake and the ns tongue as a group with the following signs, because with a vertical font you could put the baseline of the sign under its "horizontal" bit, and you could consider the tail as hanging below the baseline, as it is for the latin letters "q", "g" "p" and so on. And consider that the "30" is already a single character in unicode (as the t&w, btw.. so i would suggest you to find a more relevant example to argue for the importance of the relative position of signs..)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">So if you use my way of interpreting ramesside texts as short vertical strings of texts within an main horizontal layout, you would just need 7 (sic!!!), in general very basic, groups to display it correctly. All the other signs could just be inputted one after the other, without control characters, without ligatures, without anything, within short columns one next to the other. And you could just use basic layout algorithm to make them with the space in a nice way (you know, like when you expand or to squeeze the letters within a line to make you text look better? exactly the same thing, but vertically).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Instead, with your way of interpreting ramesside writing, which assumes that every "tall group" is a real "group" that need to be built and displayed within a single purely horizontal layout, and with your system of control characters, you would need 15 (sic!!!) groups, many of them very rare in not even unique, and you would need tens of control characters nested one into the other to correctly build and correctly display each of them.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I really wonder which approach would be more efficient, more economic and more easily implemented..</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Image 1:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span id="cid:ii_1561dafcc004ddd9"><image_1.png></span> </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Image 2:</div><div class=""><span id="cid:ii_1561dafd65ffca57"><image_2.png></span><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> </div></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div>
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