[Egyptian] On "A system of control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text" (2016-07-23)

[Mark-Jan Nederhof]

There are motivations for the particular choice of primitives we have now,
which was the result of half a year of concentrated study by the folks
from TLA, Ramses and St Andrews, with constructive criticism from some 
participants in Cambridge, and some further ideas discussed on this email list. 

Is the current collection of primitives and the way they are to be used set in 
stone? No. 

Do we have a single easy one-line answer why we need this set of primitives 
and no other. No. 

Could the theoretical and empirical support in favour of our set of primitives, 
or any other, ever be exhaustively explored? No.

Does that mean our set of primitives is completely arbitrary and baseless?
If you think that you have not read the text of our proposal and have not 
followed the discussions on the list.

For the rest you are contributing no new thoughts. Life is too short to
have to repeat the same discussions over and over and over again. 
I hope you excuse me but this is for me my last response on this thread.

Mark-Jan

On Saturday 30 Jul 2016 12:46:12 Marwan Kilani wrote:
> We are back to square one because you (and I say you as you are suggesting
> the proposal) have not approached one of the basic questions yet:
> 
> what is a spatially relevant feature that need to be encoded/displaed, and
> what is not?
> 
> stéphane gave some scattered example, but there is no definition yet, no
> general coherent frame about *how egyptian work spatially* and therefore
> about what is meaningful and what is not has been suggested. Only random
> examples taken here and there (some even borderline cases, like your Dd=f,
> where you are essentially discussing and issue that *does not exist*
> because the difference between the to is not meaningful in any way, as far
> as i know) have been pointed out. Or at least this is what I have seen.
> 
> What you describe is a calligraphic variant: it is important to be able to
> represent calligraphic variants or not?
> 
> This is an *important* question that *has to be tackled with* because it
> has consequences on all the the suggestive steps.
> 
> just to say: if you want to be able to display calligraphic variants, then
> you have to include corresponding precomposed glyphs in your font (because
> control characters dont make up anything on their own), with all the
> problems this will generate (and beside the fact that unicode is not for
> calligraphic variants)
> if instead you don't want to do that, then you have to make explicit that
> calligraphic variants *are not* meant to be handled with unicode, and this
> can have consequences on the features you need in your encoding system, and
> also brings up the next questions: if calligraphic variants are not meant
> to be encoded then 1) what is a calligraphic variant and 2) what else could
> be left out?.
> 
> This is an important question, as important as understanding what is a real
> glyph that should have an independent unicode slot, and what instead is
> just a graphic variant.
> 
> It is the same principle that make people at the workshop arguing against
> encoding into the unicode set signs "at random": you need first to know
> what is a really meaningful variant, and what instead is an allograph to
> have a manful set of hieroglyphs.
> 
> With spatial distribution should be the same: what is meaningful and what
> is not.
> 
> What is the general theoretical frame we are working in? If any?
> 
> Essentially, what (in absolute terms, in concepts, not in random examples)
> are we trying to encode and what are we not trying to encode?
> And possibly why (meaning-wise, quantity-wise etc?)
> 
> And this stands true whether you want to use ligatures, control characters,
> or whatever else.
> 
> 
> Marwan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jul 30, 2016 at 12:18 PM, Mark-Jan Nederhof <mn31 at st-andrews.ac.uk>
> wrote:
> 
> > On Saturday 30 Jul 2016 10:52:00 Marwan Kilani wrote:
> > > "For example take Dd=f, with cobra + hand + viper. Sometimes you see
> > > hand:viper clearly entirely
> > > inside the bounding box of the cobra. Sometimes you see the hand in the
> > > cobra, while the viper
> > > is entirely below, with the tail of the viper extending below the tip of
> > > the tail of the cobra. Sometimes,
> > > the head of the viper is inside the bounding box of the cobra, while the
> > > tail of the viper extends
> > > below the tail of the cobra."
> > >
> > > Sorry, to go back to the same thing, but.. what is the practical need of
> > > encoding such a distinction?
> > >
> > > having the inside or outside the cobra has (I guess I should say "as far
> > as
> > > I know") no meaning and no importance whatsoever. There is no linguistic,
> > > no semantic, nothing..
> > >
> > > it is just a graphical variant, a calligraphic choice of the scribe.
> > >
> > > Unicode should be about standardized transcriptions, not about
> > paleographic
> > > details. The important thing here is that the "f" comes after "D+d".
> > That's
> > > all.
> > > Why should we encode such calligraphic variants in the first place?
> > >
> > > What is the utility of that?
> >
> > I must have been spectacularly unclear.
> >
> > If one accepts that an encoding should contain primitives that describe
> > the approximate spatial arrangement of signs, then it is inevitable there
> > will be
> > boundary cases where it is unclear how to encode some text. That holds
> > for a system with 20 control characters as well as for a system with 3
> > control
> > characters.
> >
> > Of course, if one does not accept that an encoding should contain
> > primitives
> > that describe the spatial arrangement of signs, then we're back to square
> > one. I suggest you reread Stéphane's messages on the subject, who
> > motivated time and time again why at least one prominent potential user
> > community most certainly needs to have access to the graphical realisation
> > of a text. Stéphane explained this with extraordinary detail and above all
> > patience. I don't see any need to restart this. There are diminishing
> > returns
> > for repeating the same discussions ad infinitum.
> >
> > Mark-Jan
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Egyptian mailing list
> > Egyptian at evertype.com
> > http://evertype.com/mailman/listinfo/egyptian_evertype.com
> >