[Egyptian] Some general considerations

[Marwan Kilani]

Just one comment:

And all the parallels from other scripts are pointless (and admittedly
> funny in the framework of this discussion), since none of these scripts are
> based on a quadratic structure that is close in any respect to Egyptian.
>

Funny to read such a comment while at that meeting in Cambridge a Japanese
linguist and Egyptologist explained, by referring to scientific
publications, that Japanese (and chinese and korean) are indeed based on
quadratic structures that are indeed very close in many respect to Egyptian.

There were many things that could be said as a reply to your email, but let
be honest: with these premises, it won't make any sense.

p.s.:
No, actually, i am going to add something:
Look what happens (image 1 below) if you cut your ramesside line in small
columns (which is just a way of analyzing the text, as it is yours taking
them as groups, but as we are not egyptians it is not "truth", it is not
and don't want to be the "true nature of the text"), I was saying: Look
what happens (image 1 below) if you cut your ramesside line in small
columns and you put them one under the other..

Such a nice example of Egyptian vertical text, isn't it? :-)

And now, count how many groups you would need to compose such a text with a
vertical font within a vertical layout.
You can see the result in the second image: the groups you will need are
marked in green: 7 groups. That's all.
Note that you will not need to combine the D snake and the ns tongue as a
group with the following signs, because with a vertical font you could put
the baseline of the sign under its "horizontal" bit, and you could consider
the tail as hanging below the baseline, as it is for the latin letters "q",
"g" "p" and so on. And consider that the "30" is already a single character
in unicode (as the t&w, btw.. so i would suggest you to find a more
relevant example to argue for the importance of the relative position of
signs..)

So if you use my way of interpreting ramesside texts as short vertical
strings of texts within an main horizontal layout, you would just need 7
(sic!!!), in general very basic, groups to display it correctly. All the
other signs could just be inputted one after the other, without control
characters, without ligatures, without anything, within short columns one
next to the other. And you could just use basic layout algorithm to make
them with the space in a nice way (you know, like when you expand or to
squeeze the letters within a line to make you text look better? exactly the
same thing, but vertically).

Instead, with your way of interpreting ramesside writing, which assumes
that every "tall group" is a real "group" that need to be built and
displayed within a single purely horizontal layout, and with your system of
control characters, you would need 15 (sic!!!) groups, many of them very
rare in not even unique, and you would need tens of control characters
nested one into the other to correctly build and correctly display each of
them.

I really wonder which approach would be more efficient, more economic and
more easily implemented..

Image 1:

[image: Inline image 1]



Image 2:
[image: Inline image 2]
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