[Egyptian] Egyptological yod

[Saqqara]

Observations.

1. I am not aware of any particular concerns among Egyptologists about what
combining code is used. Much more important is to choose one as standard so
data can be encoded in Unicode.

2. Users will rarely need to know the actual code. Normally software will be
used, or data copied.

3. The diacritic as used for over a century has never resembled a
semi-circle (as in COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE) and a comma shape is
rarely used (COMBINING COMMA ABOVE) so use of these codes is not especially
helpful in Character Map type applications.

4. The combining behaviour needed for EGYPTOLOGICAL CAPITAL LETTER YOD
requires the diacritic be placed to the Top Left of the I, not above it. Now
both COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE and COMBINING COMMA ABOVE already have
script="inherited" so if we were to specify either of these to require top
left behaviour with CAPITAL LETTER I we would need to ensure this does not
break any existing use of Unicode. With COMBINING CYRILLIC PSILI PNEUMATA
there is no current defined behaviour for Latin text so we can make the
specification without risk of affecting extant Unicode-compatible data.

5. Nevertheless choosing COMBINING COMMA ABOVE would avoid the need to
change script properties. This has some benefits in terms of practical
operation with some existing software. However the non-comma shape and its
top left placing behaviour would still need to be defined. If Debbie and
Donald want to take this route, they will need to prove this does not break
any other applications of COMBINING COMMA ABOVE. Note this is a broad
technical issue, not a matter for Egyptologists.

6. The downside of COMBINING CYRILLIC PSILI PNEUMATA is the fact that it
will not currently combine with Latin text in some (but not all) common
applications such as web browsers (which apparently interpret the
script="Cyrillic" as meaning inhibit combination, irrespective of font
directives). 

I favour COMBINING CYRILLIC PSILI PNEUMATA primarily because it does not
raise the issues with COMBINING COMMA ABOVE and therefore can be actioned
safely with minimum delay.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: egyptian-bounces at evertype.com [mailto:egyptian-bounces at evertype.com]
On Behalf Of Michael Everson
Sent: 04 February 2008 17:30
To: Egyptian Discussion
Subject: [Egyptian] Egyptological yod

Dear colleagues,

The request for the UTC to make property changes to the Cyrillic 
characters to facilitate Egyptological yod which is at 
http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3382.pdf has had some feedback 
from Debbie Anderson and Donald Mastronarde. It seems that Debbie 
believes that there is not consensus amongst Egyptologists as to 
which character should be used. Debbie and Donald's document is at 
http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/08087-yod.pdf

They haven't rejected the proposal, but evidently the matter needs 
further discussion?

Does anyone have Donald's e-mail address? Debbie, if you can give me 
the addresses of your contacts, we can all discuss this here on this 
list.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com

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