[Egyptian] comments

[Michael Everson]

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