[Egyptian] Unicode 5.1, Egyptian Transliteration, and Fonts

[Saqqara]

As I understand it, UTC in 2005 rejected the proposal for a separate
Egyptological Yod and expressed a preference to use an existing combining
mark.

Apparently U+0486 COMBINING CYRILLIC PSILI PNEUMATA is the only such mark
already defined and open to suitable positioning in Latin.

So unless there are any compelling reasons to do otherwise, I agree that we
should proceed with this convention and Unicode data files and documentation
should be adjusted accordingly.

Ideally this would be incorporated in the Unicode 5.1 release, thereby
completing the traditional 'Egyptian transliteration' set.

Bob Richmond
www.saqqara.org

-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Michael Everson
Sent: 30 November 2007 21:49
To: unicode at unicode.org; UnicoRe Discussion
Cc: Egyptian Discussion
Subject: Re: [Egyptian] Unicode 5.1, Egyptian Transliteration, and Fonts

At 18:26 +0000 2007-11-30, Saqqara wrote:
>A reminder. Unicode 5.1 is bringing Egyptian Transliteration 
>characters LATIN CAPITAL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF, LATIN SMALL 
>LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL AIN 
>and LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL AIN. The EGYPTOLOGICAL YOD is 
>still an unresolved point but nevertheless the new characters allow 
>for a useable system.

The mark on the Egyptological Yod is ultimately a Greek spiritus lenis.

Here is my recommendation:

1. Spiritus lenis in Greek is U+0313 COMBINING COMMA ABOVE. In Greek, 
what this character does is sit atop a lowercase letter, and is 
preposed before uppercase letters. See U+1F00 and U+1F08.

2. U+0313 cannot be used for the Egyptological Yod because its case 
behaviour in Greek does not apply to Latin or Cyrillic. In Latin and 
Cyrillic, U+0313 sits atop both uppercase and lowercase letters. This 
happens in natural orthographies for minority languages.

3. Spiritus lenis in Cyrillic is U+0486 COMBINING CYRILLIC PSILI 
PNEUMATA. In Cyrillic, this sits atop both uppercase and lowercase 
letters. But in Latin, it could sit atop a lowercase letter, and be 
preposed before uppercase letters. It could be used with I for 
Egyptian and A and U for Ugaritic transcription.

4. If the Cyrillic diacritic can't be used, we will need to encode a 
Latin Spiritus Lenis. Or explicit LATIN LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL YOD, 
LATIN LETTER SEMITIC ALEF, and LATIN LETTER SEMITIC WAW.

5. If this is accepted, I would add an annotation to U+0486.

	* used with Latin a, i, u in Semitic studies and Egyptology

I hope this is acceptable to everyone.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com

_______________________________________________
Egyptian mailing list
Egyptian at evertype.com
http://evertype.com/mailman/listinfo/egyptian_evertype.com