[Egyptian] Two group joiners

[Bob Richmond]

Hi Mark Jan

I'll be replying to the very helpful points and suggestions from Stéphane later. 

Great you've been learning more about Unicode technicalities. But I want to skip to your concluding remark right now because it's tremendously relevant to the overall discussion.

You stated "My working assumption is that an input method editor would be used to edit hieroglyphic text in practice, so the actual syntax should not matter too much, as long as it is hidden from the user.".

NO, NO, Ten thousand times. NO.

Michel among others pointed out we need to work within conventions and techniques for Complex Scripts used in living languages. We cannot expect developers of general purpose software or web sites to spend time and money to support hieroglyphic. There is no need to presume or guess. Complex scripts are already supported in word processors and web browsers so we can test out usability. In fact it was only after experiments proved hieroglyphic was now feasible with current technology that I started this process. 

FACT ----It is impossible to fully hide control characters from users in real life.----

Input methods can help. Specialist software can indeed shield the user from complexity and do wonderful things using Unicode. And believe me I'd far rather be spending my time on that right now!

I don't want to enter a pointless debate on what is simply a fact. So I'll try to find some time later today to put together an illustrated note on the topic so we can wrap it up.

Regards,
Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: Egyptian [mailto:egyptian-bounces at evertype.com] On Behalf Of Mark-Jan Nederhof
Sent: 28 July 2016 10:32
To: egyptian at evertype.com
Subject: Re: [Egyptian] Two group joiners

Dear Stéphane,

To support to what you wrote on coherence: A long time ago we passed beyond the stage of knowing we need certain primitives. The main question is how to fit them together into a coherent scheme with a syntax that is consistent and unambiguous, without sacrificing (too much) of the power of these primitives and how they can be combined.

> I understood that parentheses are very difficult in Unicode, but can’t we think of a kind of ‘glue’ operator (precedence, as in Mark-Jan’s et al. proposal, p. 8-9), e.g. with the dot, <s * in :. n> or <m [insert_top_right] x :. ib *. Z1>, that would create groups by bounding signs together. What would be the problem of such an approach (it was initially suggested by Serge, not my idea, I insist)? Can you explain me why it would be problematic?

With respect to the discussion in Section 9 of:
http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16210-egyptian-control.pdf
the '.' above is a notational variant of the 'levels' of operator precedence, there achieved by having several copies of each primitive, for different levels. Here, for every '.' added behind an operator one goes up one level of operator precedence.

Some trick using operator precedence, either using the '.' or using several control characters per primitive with different binding values, would be an alternative to having brackets. There is a relatively straightforward mechanical mapping from one notation to the other, so there should be no difference to the expressive power and I don't think that among us (TLA/Ramses/St Andrews) there is any firm commitment to brackets or otherwise.

But as explained in Section 9, there are costs to abandoning brackets. Specifying the syntax with operator precedence formally would be a bit tricky, it might not be easy for the human to know when to use :... or *.. or insert_top_right. , and OpenType cannot really parse, as it is not a general purpose programming language, and trying to implement about a dozen different binding values
(4 primitives times 3 levels of operator precedence) might be pushing our luck. 
My working assumption is that an input method editor would be used to edit hieroglyphic text in practice, so the actual syntax should not matter too much, as long as it is hidden from the user.

Best regards,
Mark-Jan

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