From everson at evertype.com Mon Apr 2 17:42:35 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 17:42:35 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Egyptian proposal document available Message-ID: Please see: http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/n3xxx-egyptian.pdf There is a WG2 meeting in a fortnight in Frankfurt where this might (if there is time) be presented. Are there any infelicities? -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From rosmord at iut.univ-paris8.fr Mon Apr 2 19:43:51 2007 From: rosmord at iut.univ-paris8.fr (ROSMORDUC Serge) Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 19:43:51 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Egyptian proposal document available Message-ID: Michael Everson a ?crit : >Please see: > >http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/n3xxx-egyptian.pdf > >There is a WG2 meeting in a fortnight in >Frankfurt where this might (if there is time) be >presented. Are there any infelicities? > A few likely typos : I think (p. 1, last lines) you mean "aA" (not Aa), b*A*,, p*A*... I'd suggest to simply include Gardiner's list of biliteral. For triliterals, *a*HA and *a*nx. Best regards, S. Rosmorduc From everson at evertype.com Mon Apr 2 20:07:56 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 20:07:56 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Egyptian proposal document available In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 19:43 +0100 2007-04-02, ROSMORDUC Serge wrote: >A few likely typos : I think (p. 1, last lines) >you mean "aA" (not Aa), b*A*,, p*A*... I'd >suggest to simply include Gardiner's list of >biliteral. For triliterals, *a*HA and *a*nx. That seems to be a font error where I mixed up a and A. Thanks for pointing it out. I met a young woman in Oxford at the meeting. She was from Scotland, I think, and her name had a Mac in it I believe. I could be wrong. Anyway, she was interested in working on the sorting order for hieroglyphs. I think she had lunch with John Baines and me toward the end of the conference. I have lost the paper I wrote her name on! Can anyone help? -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From everson at evertype.com Mon Apr 2 21:05:26 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 21:05:26 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] This list to discuss the Egyptian proposal Message-ID: Hi all. Sorry about springing a discussion list on you all, but this is intended to be for the active participants who helped Bob and me work on the Egyptian proposal at Oxford last year. We've finally got a draft ready for scrutiny, and if there's nothing really wrong we could get Egyptian on its way through the ballotting process at the Frankfurt meeting of WG2 in a fortnight. That might be too fast. On the other hand, the deadline may get you all to read the document. ;-) 12 people are subscribed to this list: Deborah Anderson (SEI) Bob Richmond Michael Everson Eric Aubourg James Allen John Baines Jarom?r M?lek Mark-Jan Nederhof Nigel Strudwick Serge Rosmorduc Wolfgang Schenkel Angela McDonald I hope this is all right with you and that you can review the draft at http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/n3xxx-egyptian.pdf All the best, -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From mjn at cs.st-andrews.ac.uk Fri Apr 6 11:59:00 2007 From: mjn at cs.st-andrews.ac.uk (M.J. Nederhof) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 11:59:00 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] comments Message-ID: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> Hi all, I've gone through the proposal, and I'm glad that this is about to become reality. My appreciation for the creators. I have some comments, a few of which are somewhat off-topic, but perhaps still worth discussing. My first comment is about the "character names" and "complex descriptions" (p. 2). I think in the proposal no more needs to be said about this, but I cannot help making the link to some work I started a few months ago, which has as ultimate goal to create an annotated sign list with meanings and typical use, etc., as ultimately characters are more than their typical appearance. As part of this, I first tried to come up with a consistent way of naming glyphs. I found many difficulties, and Gardiner himself is far from consistent. Some questions I only partly found an answer to: 1) Should the names be as short as possible to distinguish signs from other signs, or should they be full descriptions. E.g. should we have "noble squatting" or "noble squatting with flagellum"? Note there is no sign "noble squatting without flagellum", at least not in GEG. 2) Should animals be described by scientific names, or by names that can be easily remembered, so "flamingo" or "Phoenico-pterus ..."? 3) What to do about e.g. V33 and V34, both "bag of linen"? I would gladly send anyone the list of names I have now, and discuss this further. (For the 'complex descriptions', I've only covered GEG by now, and for meaning and use I've only covered the A category.) Back to the proposal, I am not yet convinced that NL and NU should be placed between N and O. What did Gardiner do in his publications? P. 3, line 3, the 'E' in 'E034' looks wrong. Perhaps choose different font? P. 3, "Second, the use of zeros [...] Hieroglyphica". I seem to remember that the Hieroglyphica has 3-digit numbers for some categories with over 99 signs, and there are no leading zeros in that case, and thereby I find your second argument unconvincing. I assume that the present proposal is set up to also ultimately allow more than 99 signs per category (barring letter suffixes), so that the names will overlap with Hieroglyphica. (Is not serious, but invalidates the second argument.) Furthermore, I assume future MdC dialects will also refrain from using leading zeros for compatibility reasons (same holds for me in the case of RES). Thereby I think the second argument is even less relevant. By the way, one could also question the first argument, that of sorting, because Aa should be at the end, and so primitive sorting doesn't work anyway. You may argue that Aa may be replaced in ZA in the implementation, as you do in the database, but then by the same token, A1 could be replaced by A001 _in the implementation_. Let me say clearly I do not oppose leading zeros, and perhaps they simplify human look-up in tables, but I think the arguments given in the text are not very convincing. Middle of p. 3 a few typos: "have been may have been identified as bellonging". Typo (I think) in 7.2 "in _the_ Gardiner". Typo in 7.3 "fortifed". While you are in the process of adding such things as parts of cartouche-like signs, how about adding a "verse point"? I suspect that is very useful, and in fact essential for some texts. I guess Gardiner must have used them in some publication (?) I have a question (for my own benefit). The text mentions a square fortified wall and a round fortified wall. I included the square wall in RES about five years ago under the name 'inb', but I was not aware of the existence of the round wall until now. Can anyone tell me whether one or the other is more common? I may have to change the naming of my types of 'box'. For 7.5, I have my doubts about distinguishing 'unity' and 'one', and 'duality' and 'two', etc. Is this a modern invention or is this actually visible in hieroglyphic? I'm unconvinced by your plans concerning ordering (Section 9), but so be it. I have a question about Figure 3, middle column, last row: why "1" in "gf1"? P. 17, "Marc-Jan" s.b. "Mark-Jan", "Rosmarduc" s.b. "Rosmorduc". Is it intentional that V011 is significantly smaller than V011B ? On p. 31 of the database print-out, the letters W and X have been omitted. Regards, Mark-Jan From rosmord at iut.univ-paris8.fr Fri Apr 6 15:19:30 2007 From: rosmord at iut.univ-paris8.fr (ROSMORDUC Serge) Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:19:30 +0200 Subject: [Egyptian] comments In-Reply-To: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> References: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> Message-ID: <461656F2.6090503@iut.univ-paris8.fr> Hello, M.J. Nederhof a ?crit : > For 7.5, I have my doubts about distinguishing 'unity' and 'one', and > 'duality' and 'two', etc. Is this a modern invention or is this > actually visible in hieroglyphic? > > It's very visible in hieratic, where the size of the signs may distinguish the Z1 meta-determinative from the digit. It can then lead to nasty errors when working on printed hieroglyphic texts. Best regards, Serge From everson at evertype.com Fri Apr 6 20:56:45 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 20:56:45 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] comments In-Reply-To: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> References: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> Message-ID: At 11:59 +0100 2007-04-06, M.J. Nederhof wrote: >Back to the proposal, I am not yet convinced that NL and NU should be >placed between N and O. What did Gardiner do in his publications? They are listed in only one publication, G1953. In it the sections run Z, Aa, Ff, Nn. We have no Ff characters left because all have been identified as variants of other characters. I don't know that this is really indicative of anything as the Nn characters take a whole page and then some and had Gardiner inserted them between N and O it would have made G1953 a little less friendly. I don't think that the code tables would be improved by moving the NnL (> NL) and NnU (> NU) characters to the end after Aa, however. And to do so would be a rather burdensome exercise as the WG2 meeting begins in a fortnight. >P. 3, line 3, the 'E' in 'E034' looks wrong. Perhaps choose different font? It's just small-caps. >P. 3, "Second, the use of zeros [...] Hieroglyphica". [...] Let me >say clearly I do not oppose leading zeros, and perhaps they simplify >human look-up in tables, but I think the arguments given in the text >are not very convincing. Stet then. Arguments do not have to be airtight. They just have to be sufficient for the committees. >While you are in the process of adding such things as parts of cartouche-like >signs, how about adding a "verse point"? I suspect that is very useful, >and in fact essential for some texts. I guess Gardiner must have used them >in some publication (?) If something turns up it could be added during the ballot period (which is 18 months or so). I don't know what the "verse point" is though. >I have a question (for my own benefit). The text mentions a square fortified >wall and a round fortified wall. I included the square wall in RES about five >years ago under the name 'inb', but I was not aware of the existence of the >round wall until now. Can anyone tell me whether one or the other is more >common? I may have to change the naming of my types of 'box'. The names I use are "cartouche" for the rounded ones and "enclosure" for the square ones. I don't really know if a principled distinction is made between the "fortified wall cartouche" and the "fortified wall enclosure" but I erred on the side of generosity in encoding. >For 7.5, I have my doubts about distinguishing 'unity' and 'one', and >'duality' and 'two', etc. Is this a modern invention or is this >actually visible in hieroglyphic? Serge has answered this. I'll mention Hieratic in the draft. >I'm unconvinced by your plans concerning ordering (Section 9), but so be it. Binary order is worse than the phonetic in my view. I think in practice the phonetic will work pretty well. >I have a question about Figure 3, middle column, last row: why "1" in "gf1"? Just a typo. >Is it intentional that V011 is significantly smaller than V011B ? Yes. See G1957:523. >On p. 31 of the database print-out, the letters W and X have >been omitted. I see them. I am not sure what you mean. Is everyone happy about how we handled the numbers? -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From ncs3 at cam.ac.uk Fri Apr 6 21:07:17 2007 From: ncs3 at cam.ac.uk (Nigel Strudwick) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 15:07:17 -0500 Subject: [Egyptian] comments In-Reply-To: References: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> Message-ID: Can someone enlighten me as to a) what NL and NU are, and b) what is G1953? [No, I haven't read the proposal.] Nigel On 6 Apr 2007, at 14:56, Michael Everson wrote: > At 11:59 +0100 2007-04-06, M.J. Nederhof wrote: > >> Back to the proposal, I am not yet convinced that NL and NU should be >> placed between N and O. What did Gardiner do in his publications? > > They are listed in only one publication, G1953. In it the sections > run Z, Aa, Ff, Nn. We have no Ff characters left because all have > been identified as variants of other characters. I don't know that > this is really indicative of anything as the Nn characters take a > whole page and then some and had Gardiner inserted them between N and > O it would have made G1953 a little less friendly. > > I don't think that the code tables would be improved by moving the > NnL (> NL) and NnU (> NU) characters to the end after Aa, however. > And to do so would be a rather burdensome exercise as the WG2 meeting > begins in a fortnight. From everson at evertype.com Fri Apr 6 21:14:50 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 21:14:50 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] comments In-Reply-To: References: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> Message-ID: At 15:07 -0500 2007-04-06, Nigel Strudwick wrote: >Can someone enlighten me as to a) what NL and NU are, and b) what is >G1953? [No, I haven't read the proposal.] Gardiner 1953 is the fourth of the font catalogues. NL are the Nomes of Lower Egypt and NU are the Nomes of Upper Egypt. The proposal is at http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/n3xxx-egyptian.pdf -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From john.baines at orinst.ox.ac.uk Fri Apr 6 21:39:37 2007 From: john.baines at orinst.ox.ac.uk (John Baines) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 21:39:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Egyptian] comments In-Reply-To: References: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> Message-ID: It's true a verse point could be useful. Its a small black circle placed at the top of the bad height or a bit above, and it represents a blob used in hieratic to 'punctuate' text. Because it is used in black and red in manuscripts, it is useful to have a solid and a hollow version in monochrome. On some views it represents metrical units (though not always) and on others it demarcates segments of text that may not be metrical. It is not a true hieroglyph but a transcription convention, but that applies to a few other signs too, and so is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. It may never have been entered in any list--I don't know and I am not near a library at the moment. It will be easy to find a model in transcriptions of hieratic texts, perhaps also in the Theinhardt or IFAO fonts. But it would be fine to think about it in the 18 month lead time. John On Fri, 6 Apr 2007, Michael Everson wrote: > At 11:59 +0100 2007-04-06, M.J. Nederhof wrote: > >> Back to the proposal, I am not yet convinced that NL and NU should be >> placed between N and O. What did Gardiner do in his publications? > > They are listed in only one publication, G1953. In it the sections > run Z, Aa, Ff, Nn. We have no Ff characters left because all have > been identified as variants of other characters. I don't know that > this is really indicative of anything as the Nn characters take a > whole page and then some and had Gardiner inserted them between N and > O it would have made G1953 a little less friendly. > > I don't think that the code tables would be improved by moving the > NnL (> NL) and NnU (> NU) characters to the end after Aa, however. > And to do so would be a rather burdensome exercise as the WG2 meeting > begins in a fortnight. > >> P. 3, line 3, the 'E' in 'E034' looks wrong. Perhaps choose different font? > > It's just small-caps. > >> P. 3, "Second, the use of zeros [...] Hieroglyphica". [...] Let me >> say clearly I do not oppose leading zeros, and perhaps they simplify >> human look-up in tables, but I think the arguments given in the text >> are not very convincing. > > Stet then. Arguments do not have to be airtight. They just have to be > sufficient for the committees. > >> While you are in the process of adding such things as parts of cartouche-like >> signs, how about adding a "verse point"? I suspect that is very useful, >> and in fact essential for some texts. I guess Gardiner must have used them >> in some publication (?) > > If something turns up it could be added during the ballot period > (which is 18 months or so). I don't know what the "verse point" is > though. > >> I have a question (for my own benefit). The text mentions a square fortified >> wall and a round fortified wall. I included the square wall in RES about five >> years ago under the name 'inb', but I was not aware of the existence of the >> round wall until now. Can anyone tell me whether one or the other is more >> common? I may have to change the naming of my types of 'box'. > > The names I use are "cartouche" for the rounded ones and "enclosure" > for the square ones. I don't really know if a principled distinction > is made between the "fortified wall cartouche" and the "fortified > wall enclosure" but I erred on the side of generosity in encoding. > >> For 7.5, I have my doubts about distinguishing 'unity' and 'one', and >> 'duality' and 'two', etc. Is this a modern invention or is this >> actually visible in hieroglyphic? > > Serge has answered this. I'll mention Hieratic in the draft. > >> I'm unconvinced by your plans concerning ordering (Section 9), but so be it. > > Binary order is worse than the phonetic in my view. I think in > practice the phonetic will work pretty well. > >> I have a question about Figure 3, middle column, last row: why "1" in "gf1"? > > Just a typo. > >> Is it intentional that V011 is significantly smaller than V011B ? > > Yes. See G1957:523. > >> On p. 31 of the database print-out, the letters W and X have >> been omitted. > > I see them. I am not sure what you mean. > > Is everyone happy about how we handled the numbers? > -- > Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com > > _______________________________________________ > Egyptian mailing list > Egyptian at evertype.com > http://evertype.com/mailman/listinfo/egyptian_evertype.com > From everson at evertype.com Fri Apr 6 22:18:06 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 22:18:06 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] comments In-Reply-To: References: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> Message-ID: At 21:39 +0100 2007-04-06, John Baines wrote: > It may never have been entered in any list--I don't know and >I am not near a library at the moment. It will be easy to find a >model in transcriptions of hieratic texts, perhaps also in the >Theinhardt or IFAO fonts. But it would be fine to think about it in >the 18 month lead time. Definitely not for now. -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From mjn at cs.st-andrews.ac.uk Mon Apr 9 13:00:47 2007 From: mjn at cs.st-andrews.ac.uk (M.J. Nederhof) Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2007 13:00:47 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] printer problem In-Reply-To: References: <200704061159.00995.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> Message-ID: <200704091300.48412.mjn@cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> > >On p. 31 of the database print-out, the letters W and X have > >been omitted. > > I see them. I am not sure what you mean. Strange. I now see only my print-out suffers from this problem, not any PDF viewers. The problem is a space where there should be a W or X in the first column. I cannot determine whether it is my platform that is at fault. If you cannot reproduce the problem, perhaps you can further ignore this issue. By the way, I seem to vaguely remember that a print-out of the proposal I made in Spain last year had the same problem. Mark-Jan From everson at evertype.com Wed Apr 11 22:11:48 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:11:48 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Egyptian proposal available Message-ID: This will be discussed at the next meeting of WG2, the last week of April in Frankfurt: http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3237.pdf -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com