[Egyptian] comments

[John Baines]

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
>
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