From ncs3 at cam.ac.uk Wed Aug 1 13:07:26 2007 From: ncs3 at cam.ac.uk (Nigel Strudwick) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 13:07:26 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Happy Hieroglyph Day! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <63556D2E-120F-4A4E-9508-2D0AFCCE6DFF@cam.ac.uk> Michael I just found this in my mail. I'm afraid you're not quite right, as I checked a similar query from a journalist with my colleagues in the BM. The sources are no more precise than the middle of July. Sorry to spoil things... Cheers Nigel On 15 Jul 2007, at 13:02, Michael Everson wrote: > On this day in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was uncovered by French > soldiers at Rashid. > > Life! Health! Prosperity! > -- > 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 Wed Aug 1 13:13:48 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 13:13:48 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Happy Hieroglyph Day! In-Reply-To: <63556D2E-120F-4A4E-9508-2D0AFCCE6DFF@cam.ac.uk> References: <63556D2E-120F-4A4E-9508-2D0AFCCE6DFF@cam.ac.uk> Message-ID: Nigel, At 13:07 +0100 2007-08-01, Nigel Strudwick wrote: >I just found this in my mail. I'm afraid you're not quite right, as I >checked a similar query from a journalist with my colleagues in the >BM. All praise to the Wikipedia. > The sources are no more precise than the middle of July. Sorry to >spoil things... I wonder if we could blame the recession of the rising of Sirius or something. -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From everson at evertype.com Wed Aug 1 14:08:15 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 14:08:15 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Sorting the phonograms Message-ID: I'll be posting a draft for sorting phonograms before too long. There needs to be a specification for this. One problem is deciding which should be the default for signs that have more than one reading. -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From everson at evertype.com Wed Aug 15 21:47:23 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 21:47:23 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Towards a deterministic sort for Egyptian Unicode characters Message-ID: Please see http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/egyptian-sorting-1.pdf and comment. Questions: 1. Have errors been made? 2. For signs which have more than one reading, have I chosen the correct one? 3. Should characters which are proper ideograms be ordered according to their pronunciation? Please remember the discussion from last summer. The ordering here will be better than binary order, though it will not be as perfect as an Egyptologist would put into a dictionary. I look forward to hearing your responses. -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From ncs3 at cam.ac.uk Thu Aug 16 13:02:31 2007 From: ncs3 at cam.ac.uk (Nigel Strudwick) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:02:31 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Towards a deterministic sort for Egyptian Unicode characters Message-ID: Michael I confess to not understanding what this is about. Surely one can sort the transliteration characters, but there is little point in sorting glyphs, as only a relatively small subset of them have phonetic values, and some have several? Aren't we getting beyond the basic encoding of hieroglyphs again? Nigel On 15 Aug 2007, at 21:47, Michael Everson wrote: >Please see >http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/egyptian-sorting-1.pdf >and comment. Questions: > >1. Have errors been made? > >2. For signs which have more than one reading, have I chosen the correct one? > >3. Should characters which are proper ideograms be ordered according >to their pronunciation? > >Please remember the discussion from last summer. The ordering here >will be better than binary order, though it will not be as perfect as >an Egyptologist would put into a dictionary. > >I look forward to hearing your responses. >-- >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 Thu Aug 16 14:35:38 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:35:38 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Towards a deterministic sort for Egyptian Unicode characters In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Nigel, At 13:02 +0100 2007-08-16, Nigel Strudwick wrote: >I confess to not understanding what this is about. It is arcane, yes. But you're asking good questions that I think everyone might be asking. >Surely one can sort the transliteration characters, but there is >little point in sorting glyphs, as only a relatively small subset of >them have phonetic values, and some have several? Aren't we getting >beyond the basic encoding of hieroglyphs again? You are right... the transliteration characters will be sorted as Latin characters are. (Typically this will mean that the default order will not be as Gardiner orders it but using the Levantine ABC order, unless a special Egyptological sorting algorithm is applied.) But there is indeed a point to sorting the glyphs. Because they are *characters*, computers will sort them. If we offer no specification, then the characters will be sorted by computers as though the alphabet were: r, a, d, b, x, A, m, w, f, D, i, q, n, S, s/z, h, p, T, H, k, g, t, y, X. That's not going to be very easy for someone to use. Consider for instance someone who has named a number of files with Hieroglyphs. If the files are listed in r-a-d-b... order they will be pretty hard to find in the list. On the other hand, if they are listed in A-i-y-a... order it will be a lot friendlier. A, i, y, a, w, b, p, f, m, n, r, h, H, X, x, s/z, S, q, k, g, t, T, d, D 1) It's true that only a subset of hieroglyphs have phonetic values, but the uniliterals, biliterals, and triliterals are very common, and if they were sorted in A-i-y-a... order then more words would appear in the right relative position in an ordered list. That will help people find them. 2) Alphabetical ordering isn't always as precise as we who grew up with the alphabet song. The ordering I proposed won't meet your expectations in the same way that the ordering of the Latin transliteration characters do, but it's not possible to order Egyptian **characters** according to that... it has to be done by ordering Egyptian words against another field which contains the transliteration. 3) A sorting specification *is* part of the basic encoding of any script. ISO/IEC 10646 specifies the content of the Universal Character Set, and ISO/IEC 14651 specifies the sorting of the UCS. And on the Unicode side, there is the Unicode Collation Algorithm. So there is no way of getting away from the question of ordering. The computer will order the characters in r-a-d-b order if we do nothing, and, warts and all, ordering the uniliterals, biliterals, and triliterals (and possibly some or more than some ideograms) will in the long run be more helpful to users of Hieroglyphs on computers than r-a-d-b will be. That puts us back to my questions: 1. Have errors been made? 2. For signs which have more than one reading, have I chosen the correct one? (One must be chosen, on whatever arbitrary or non-arbitrary basis we have to make it. Options are: (a) which comes first in alphabetical order, (b) which is more frequent, (c) visual similarity to another sign which has an unambiguous reading, or (d) which wins a coin toss. 3. Should characters which are proper ideograms be ordered according to their pronunciation? Best regards, -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From everson at evertype.com Thu Aug 16 14:44:52 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:44:52 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Subscribers Message-ID: FYI, the following are subscribed to this list: Debbie Anderson Eric Aubourg Michael Everson James Allen John Baines Jarom?r M?lek Mark Jan Nederhof Nigel Strudwick Serge Rosmorduc Bob Richmond Wolfgang Schenkel Angela McDonald -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From secquin2003 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Aug 17 10:12:39 2007 From: secquin2003 at yahoo.co.uk (Angela McDonald) Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:12:39 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Egyptian] Towards a deterministic sort for Egyptian Unicode characters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <587495.16507.qm@web25503.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Hi there, I've looked through the pages you sent and made a note of errors or inconsistencies I spotted. Hope it's useful. I've used a Glyph-style transliteration code rather than actual transliteration just in case you didn't have my font. All the best, Angela Michael Everson wrote: Nigel, At 13:02 +0100 2007-08-16, Nigel Strudwick wrote: >I confess to not understanding what this is about. It is arcane, yes. But you're asking good questions that I think everyone might be asking. >Surely one can sort the transliteration characters, but there is >little point in sorting glyphs, as only a relatively small subset of >them have phonetic values, and some have several? Aren't we getting >beyond the basic encoding of hieroglyphs again? You are right... the transliteration characters will be sorted as Latin characters are. (Typically this will mean that the default order will not be as Gardiner orders it but using the Levantine ABC order, unless a special Egyptological sorting algorithm is applied.) But there is indeed a point to sorting the glyphs. Because they are *characters*, computers will sort them. If we offer no specification, then the characters will be sorted by computers as though the alphabet were: r, a, d, b, x, A, m, w, f, D, i, q, n, S, s/z, h, p, T, H, k, g, t, y, X. That's not going to be very easy for someone to use. Consider for instance someone who has named a number of files with Hieroglyphs. If the files are listed in r-a-d-b... order they will be pretty hard to find in the list. On the other hand, if they are listed in A-i-y-a... order it will be a lot friendlier. A, i, y, a, w, b, p, f, m, n, r, h, H, X, x, s/z, S, q, k, g, t, T, d, D 1) It's true that only a subset of hieroglyphs have phonetic values, but the uniliterals, biliterals, and triliterals are very common, and if they were sorted in A-i-y-a... order then more words would appear in the right relative position in an ordered list. That will help people find them. 2) Alphabetical ordering isn't always as precise as we who grew up with the alphabet song. The ordering I proposed won't meet your expectations in the same way that the ordering of the Latin transliteration characters do, but it's not possible to order Egyptian **characters** according to that... it has to be done by ordering Egyptian words against another field which contains the transliteration. 3) A sorting specification *is* part of the basic encoding of any script. ISO/IEC 10646 specifies the content of the Universal Character Set, and ISO/IEC 14651 specifies the sorting of the UCS. And on the Unicode side, there is the Unicode Collation Algorithm. So there is no way of getting away from the question of ordering. The computer will order the characters in r-a-d-b order if we do nothing, and, warts and all, ordering the uniliterals, biliterals, and triliterals (and possibly some or more than some ideograms) will in the long run be more helpful to users of Hieroglyphs on computers than r-a-d-b will be. That puts us back to my questions: 1. Have errors been made? 2. For signs which have more than one reading, have I chosen the correct one? (One must be chosen, on whatever arbitrary or non-arbitrary basis we have to make it. Options are: (a) which comes first in alphabetical order, (b) which is more frequent, (c) visual similarity to another sign which has an unambiguous reading, or (d) which wins a coin toss. 3. Should characters which are proper ideograms be ordered according to their pronunciation? Best regards, -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com _______________________________________________ Egyptian mailing list Egyptian at evertype.com http://evertype.com/mailman/listinfo/egyptian_evertype.com --------------------------------- For ideas on reducing your carbon footprint visit Yahoo! For Good this month. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Everson comments.doc Type: application/msword Size: 31744 bytes Desc: 3824512912-Everson comments.doc URL: From everson at evertype.com Fri Aug 17 11:58:17 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 11:58:17 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Towards a deterministic sort for Egyptian Unicode characters In-Reply-To: <587495.16507.qm@web25503.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <587495.16507.qm@web25503.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: At 10:12 +0100 2007-08-17, Angela McDonald wrote: >Response to Egyptian sorting doc >General comment: have you looked at the >Lautwerte section (pp. 1455-63) at the end of >the new edition of Hannig's Grosses >Handworterbuch Agyptisch-Deutch which lists >signs by their phonetic values? Might be a >useful check and guide. No, and I don't have this. I have his ?gyptisches W?rterbuch 1. Could you scan the Lautwerte section and make it available as a PDF? At present I am using Gardiner and Allen. >1. Have errors been made? >Below are a few errors I spotted: >p. 2 The walking reed leaf sign (Gardiner M18) should read iy not i. >p. 2 The tree sign (M1) can be transliterated as iAm in addition to imA. >p. 3 The pustule sign (Aa2) can also be used to write Hsb. >p. 3 The hoof-sign (F25) should be >transliterated wHm (second h) not wxm (third h). >p. 3 The fattened duck (G42) should read wSA not wSr. All corrected. >p. 3 I'd be tempted to treat the two flying duck >signs as separate (so < not <<) since they only >alternate in error. They are not variants of the >same sign. G41 only reads pA when written in >error for G40. Corrected. >p. 3 The crested bird's head (H2) can also read >mAa. Again I would treat the spoonbill head (H3) >as a separate sign (<) rather than an alternate >version (<<). Here's an example, then, of where H003 has one reading (pAq) but H002 has three (in alphabetical order wSm, pAq, mAa). If we were choosing the default reading for H002 alphabetically, it would be wSm. Is that what we want? It may be the case that we should judge these on a case-by-case basis. >p. 4 The leg sign (D56) can also read rd. Hannig >lists a number of alternatives, but pd and rd >are the two more common. >p. 4 The vulture sign (G14) can also read nr. >p. 5 The ship part (Aa5) should read Hp not Hip. Allen gave H(i)p. But OK. >p. 5 The flowers (M2) can also read is as well as Hn. OK, but here if we were choosing alphabetically, is precedes Hn. Yet Allen and Gardiner give Hn first. Must dash to the post office. Will respond to the rest when I get back in a bit. -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From everson at evertype.com Fri Aug 17 15:35:26 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:35:26 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Towards a deterministic sort for Egyptian Unicode characters In-Reply-To: <587495.16507.qm@web25503.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <587495.16507.qm@web25503.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: >p. 5 The two writings of HD with the sceptre (T3) and sceptre and >snake (T5) should be << not < (cf. wAD on p. 3). OK >I'm not sure that HDD should be listed separately. It's not an >independently used sign, it's a doubled form of HD. Well... on page 8 we have both D and DD. Strictly speaking HDD is triliteral while HD is biliteral. >p. 7 the knotted cloth (S24) should read Tz not TAz. Pasting error. Fixed. >>2. For signs which have more than one reading, have I chosen the >>correct one? (One must be chosen, on whatever arbitrary or >>non-arbitrary basis we have to make it. Options are: (a) which comes >>first in alphabetical order, (b) which is more frequent, (c) visual >>similarity to another sign which has an unambiguous reading, or (d) >>which wins a coin toss. > >I don't think there is a always a 'correct' reading of a sign. I take your point, and didn't mean to imply otherwise. >There are just relatively common/uncommon readings. Probably best to >follow alphabetical order rather than trying to gauge frequency of >occurrence which will not always be easy to do. You'll see from my previous message that (e.g. pAq) it might be best to make a case-by-case determination. I guess the way to decide what to do is to look at the sorting file and in each instance where it says "also" to decide which reading should be given for the default sort. Perhaps in most instances it will be relatively easy and then we can agonize a bit over the remaining few which are hard. >>3. Should characters which are proper ideograms be ordered according >>to their pronunciation? > >Not sure I understand the question. Can you give an example of a >'proper' ideogram as opposed to an improper one?! In discussions I've had offline with Nigel and also responding to Wolfgang I clarified this a bit more in my mind. Ideograms/logograms are signs that actually stand for a particular word, that is, they have a reading on their own when alone and not accompanied by phonetic complements. Determinatives/semograms are the improper ones, since they are just pictures without any specific reading. As an example, should we order the sun N005 by itself as "ra"? -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From everson at evertype.com Fri Aug 17 17:22:30 2007 From: everson at evertype.com (Michael Everson) Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:22:30 +0100 Subject: [Egyptian] Schenkel's comments on the ballot (HIGH PRIORITY) Message-ID: Wolfgang kindly sent comments on the proposal document some of which are editorial, and some of which could affect the character set under ballot. I'm going to ignore the editorial remarks for now since the ballot comments take priority. I will say ACCEPTED for changes I think should be made to the ballot, and REJECTED for things which I think need not be made. ***DECISION NEEDED means just that. >A006A and A006B: Gardiner 1953 A 6* should be >A006A, even if it is more complicated than the >non-Gardiner sign actually numbered A006A? ACCEPTED. I have checked this and while I do not have a sample showing the glyph for what in the proposal is A006B I agree that the glyph shown in G1953:A6* should be the one we show at A006A. >O010A: In Gardiner's ?Fount" the door is below. ACCEPTED. I have checked and Wolfgang is correct -- the glyph should be changed so the door is at the bottom right not the top right. >After S026 insert S026A = Gardiner N 18 (see >Gardiner 1957, p. 507). The meaning of S026A is >different from N018. ***DECISION NEEDED. Gardiner does say quite clearly that there is a "sandy-tract" lookalike that should follow S026. 'Different signs" he says. Will it appear differently in painted hieroglyphs, for instance? >T036: Two signs have been confounded: Gardiner's >(1953) T 36 is a different hieroglyph. The >hieroglyph belongs to Gardiner's (1953) T 37. REJECTED. The little scimitar called T36 in G1953 is called T16* in G1931, and is encoded as T016A at U+1331B. No change needed. >After S026 insert S026A = Gardiner N 18 (see >Gardiner 1957, p. 507). The meaning of S026A is >different from N018. This appears to be a duplicate comment. >After U012 insert U012A = Gardiner O 30 (see >Gardiner 1957, p. 517). The meaning of U012A is >different from O 30. REJECTED. The pitchfork has been encoded as U042 at U+13360. >After X004A insert X004B = Gardiner N 18 (see >Gardiner 1957, p. 532). The meaning of X004A is >different from N018. ***DECISION NEEDED. Gardiner does say that this is a different character from N018. Will it appear differently in painted hieroglyphs, for instance? >After Z003A insert Z003B = Gardiner small tripel >(horizontal) N 33 (see Gardiner 1957, p. 490). >The meaning of Z003B is different from tripel N >33. ***DECISION NEEDED. I tend to think we should reject this because Gardiner says that the three grains of sand are "sometimes substituted" for the plural strokes. That means to me that they are still grains of sand... just that they are being used with a different meaning. But please >After Z003A insert Z003C = Gardiner small tripel >(vertical) N 33 (see Gardiner 1957, p. 490). The >meaning of Z003C is different from tripel N 33. Same as above. >After Z008 insert Z008A = Gardiner N 33 (see >Gardiner 1957, p. 538). The meaning of Z008A is >different from N033? Delete Z013 (source = ?)? REJECTED. Z013 is the round circle used as a geometric figure meaning 'round'. Its source is Gardiner G1953:6:Z13. >After Z008 insert Z008B = Gardiner M 44 (see >Gardiner 1957, p. 538). The meaning of Z008B is >different from M044. REJECTED. I don't think there is much of a case to be made for encoding this separately from M044. Allen treats them the same and at M044 Gardiner says that "possibly it is the same sign, if not a mere triangle, which serves as ideo. or det. in spd 'sharp'." M?ller gives only a geomatric sign, not a separate one under Plants and Parts of Plants. So far I don't see a strong case for disunifying them. (I am willing to hear one.) >Cross reference for E035 = NU015? I propose, not >to use E035 in the future, but exclusivly NU015: >?E034 replaced by NU015". ACCEPTED. Well spotted! This is a duplicate character. E035 should be removed. I haven't identified/sought for the sources of / reasons for the following signs: A043A, A045A, A069, A070, B005A, B009, C023, C024, D067, E017A, F053A, L008, M015A, O010B, O010C, O019A, T011A, U029A, U042, V033A. Most signs are immediately convincing, and there are no serious doubts for the rest. A043A is G1953:2:C21 A045A is from the GITB. I do not have a reference. Jarom?r? A069 is from the GITB. I do not have a reference. It is also in A1999:423:A68. A070 is from GITB:8-1:626:810 B005A is from GITB:8-4:13:500 B009 is from GITB:8-2:690:370 C023 is from the GITB. I do not have a reference. C024 is from GITB:8-1:753:130 D067 is from G1957:199:1, M1909:66:DDc695, M1936:63:DDc695 E017A is from GITB:8-2:134:610 F053A (I think you mean F053) is from GITB:8-1:797:520 L008 is from GITB:8-1:221:400 M015A is from GITB:8-1:750:190 O010B is from GITB:8-1:755:460 O010C is from the GITB. I do not have a reference. O019A is from G1953:4:O19* T011A is from GITB:8-2:065:700 U029A is from G1953:5:U29* U042 is from G1957:546:(O30), A1999:443:U109 V033A is from GITB:8-2:065:299 Bob, Jarom?r... can you provide references for the GITB characters we don't have? -- Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com From john.baines at orinst.ox.ac.uk Thu Aug 23 14:47:59 2007 From: john.baines at orinst.ox.ac.uk (John Baines) Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:47:59 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Egyptian] Correspondence so far Message-ID: Dear All I've followed this conversation but have not been able to look into it in detail, so that and I can't contribute specific comments. I should nonetheless like to say that a great deal of care is clearly going into the proposal, and the basic structure of what is being done is admirable. There will never be complete consensus on all the sign identifications and distinctions. Incorporating hieroglyphs into Unicode will be an enormous advance in making them usable for many purposes, and I am happy to see this being done so well and to see the range of contributions that is being made to the process. John