[Egyptian] Preliminary proposal to encode Möller's Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the SMP of the UCS

Mon Oct 10 10:31:33 BST 2016

Hi Stéphane

Good to hear  you’ve found funding to employ someone to work on sign-list documentation.

Have you any estimate as to when we can look forward to seeing something online?

Regards,
Bob

From: Stéphane polis<mailto:s.polis at ulg.ac.be>
Sent: 10 October 2016 09:16
To: Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS<mailto:egyptian at evertype.com>
Subject: Re: [Egyptian] Preliminary proposal to encode Möller's Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the SMP of the UCS

Hi everyone,

Thanks a lot for your message, Michel!

As mentioned during the Cambridge meeting (and stressed again in several mails by Mark-Jan), producing a referenced sign-list (according to the model that Serge and myself presented in Cambridge or following another model, it does not matter much) shall require scholarly work — and comparing the shape of forms in publications without paying systematic attention to the phonemographic and semographic functions of these signs in context will hardly lead anywhere satisfying for the egyptological community.

A PhD student coming from the university of Leiden is about to start a 4 year fellowship here in two weeks. His goal is precisely to work on a documented sign-list in the framework of a collaboration between the Berlin Academy and Liège. You’re obviously much welcome to go ahead, as we can definitely integrate your result in the forthcoming online Sign-list, but I think that it’s good for you to know about the schedule of both institutions. In a nutshell, it’s certainly gonna take a bit of time on our side, but something should be available online in the next few years.

Best wishes,

Stéphane

------------------------------------------------------
Chercheur qualifié F.R.S.-FNRS

Université de Liège
Service d'Égyptologie
Département des sciences de l’Antiquité
Place du 20-Août,
B-4000 Liège

http://www.egypto.ulg.ac.be
------------------------------------------------------

Le 8 oct. 2016 à 22:00, Michel Suignard <michel at suignard.com<mailto:michel at suignard.com>> a écrit :

Even if a bit late, I want to add my feedback to this and mention that I have posted new materials.

To answer both Bob and Mark-Jan, I am in the opinion that we should aim at offering a significant addition reasonably quickly. Since the Cambridge meeting I have worked at re-classifying the Hieroglyphica set and add mapping to the set. For example, I used the Dendara Cauville references and accompanying IFAO reference to create references in my own database. At some point, when these Hiroglyphica items get enough reference, they may become candidate for future encoding. A key part of that work was to recreate a new taxonomy, still roughly ordered by the usual A-Z based Gardiner set, but with meaningful sub-sets based on the IFAO classification. It is far from perfect, but it makes search and future insertion much easier.
Unlike my previous approach, I am not aiming at getting the full Hieroglyphica encoded at once. In fact, if anything the new taxonomy work has shown to me that a significant part of the Hieroglyphica set are duplicate or at least suspicious. So I think that a staged approach is preferable. At the same time, it looks like a subset of about 4000 characters have a decent case (including the 1071 already encoded).
My work is available as http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16257-n4751-hieroglyphs-new.pdf It includes a full copy of the database as of now.

I have done comparison with the work mentioned in this subject, and it seems to me that many of the proposed 166 are included in my own set (at least the ones I could identify).

Now answering some of Mark-Jan remarks in more details:

- I am also puzzled by L008. It does not look much like an insect. It could be many things. I have no access to the source mentioned by Unikemet (Griffith Institute Topopraphical Bibiography, 8-1:221:400), so I cannot contribute. For now, I have kept in the Insect category but would be game to move it, based on further feedback.

- concerning proposed 13458 (A095), I agree it looks like A60. Cauville references it in page 18, with 3 IFAO references (14,13; 14,15; and 15,1). At this point my set has 3 variants (H-A60, H-A60A, and H-A138). The taxonomy for that group now says ‘pouring water’, but obviously needs to be altered to also mention ‘sowing seeds’.

- concerning proposed 13482 (K010), I agree with Bob it is a variant of K4. Cauville distinguishes them in page 134 (134,4 and 134,5), and referencing 3 IFAO indexes (227,8; 227,12; and 227,13). I have 3 of them included.

- concerning proposed 13452 (A089), I agree there are some similarities with A42 and A51, although A51 looks closer. Note that Hieroglyphica has H-A51 and H-A51A, referenced by Cauville page 17 (17,5) with 2 IFA references: 36,10 and 37,1. I would tend to think that 13452 looks a lot like H-A51A (IFAO 37,1).

I would encourage all of you to have a look at my document. It is definitively a work in progress. I have to add more IFAO mapping and more sources. At some point it would also be good to add phonograms and determinatives. I also intend to add a column in the database for encoding priority to determine which entries should be encoded first.

Best regards.

Michel

From: Egyptian [mailto:egyptian-bounces at evertype.com] On Behalf Of Bob Richmond
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2016 6:11 AM
To: Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com<mailto:everson at evertype.com>>
Cc: Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS <egyptian at evertype.com<mailto:egyptian at evertype.com>>
Subject: Re: [Egyptian] Preliminary proposal to encode Möller's Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the SMP of the UCS

Hi Michael

I agree with Mark-Jan Moeller 259 v1 looks like it can be identified with K004 . The v2 and v3 versions identify with the well-known later form (HG-K4A) so should probably be separately encoded as K004A.

(To list - I expect Michael will be pleased to receive more detailed feedback on specifics from Egyptologists and other as requested in N4741 section 5).

Bob

From: Mark-Jan Nederhof<mailto:mn31 at st-andrews.ac.uk>
Sent: 19 September 2016 12:21
To: Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS<mailto:egyptian at evertype.com>
Subject: Re: [Egyptian] Preliminary proposal to encode Möller's Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the SMP of the UCS

With the 1071 signs in Unicode, there may at present be roughly two ways of
encoding texts:

(1) There are not-quite-so-serious users like me who, perhaps from a misplaced
sense of being principled, refuse to use dubious, ill-documented,
ill-standardized sign lists derived from the Hieroglyphica, and who therefore
only use the Unicode set, as that is at least stable. Whenever they come
across a sign that is not in Unicode, they have to use a place holder. (I then
tend to use a question mark in my encoding, with a footnote describing what
the sign depicts.)

(2) Then there are serious users, like TLA and Ramses, who cannot afford to
leave place holders in their encoding. They use one from an infinite supply of
extended sets, and won't bother with Unicode, because that is much too
restrictive. They realise fully well of course what is wrong with the extended
sets, but at present there is no other alternative given their requirements.

Neither of these types of users is happy with the status quo. The solution
could be a thoroughly designed extended set in Unicode, properly researched
and documented.  A solid list is in the making, in the form of the
Thot sign list.  The problem is that this takes time and a lot of effort, and
apparently some people are not patient enough to wait for the project to be
completed, or at least for the project to be advanced enough to cover most
signs.

So what is to be done in the short term? For the people in (2) only
a very comprehensive collection of signs in Unicode will suffice, and
make them switch from their own sign lists to Unicode. But this is not
forthcoming. For the people in (1), what would help tremendously are
incremental additions with the most frequent signs not yet in Unicode.
The most frequent signs also happen to be the ones that are best understood.
But incremental additions cost extra time and detract from the purpose of
building a more complete set.

In contrast, random small additions will be pointless and even harmful, because:

* Adding rare signs will not noticeably decrease the frequency of having
to leave place holders while encoding typical texts.

* The more unbalanced a sign list is, the more difficult it is for users to find their
way, and choose the most appropriate signs for an encoding.

* Premature additions may interfere with more additions later. Thorough and
systematic investigations will be needed for deciding between say graphical
variants and characters, and these investigations benefit from having a broad
view over the collection of signs in a comprehensive collection of texts, so
that the most appropriate choice can be made which shapes deserve to become
code points and be representatives of a range of variants.

Trying to fish accidental glyphs from Moeller that, probably for good reason,
didn't make their way into the Gardiner set leads exactly to an addition that
we don't need.  Sure, some font designers who have nothing better to do will
be happy to be able to draw a few more signs for their Unicode fonts, but the
extension will have zero benefit for people who are actually encoding texts.

What further bothers me is a repetition of mistakes from the past. What we
need is not only cross references, but a thorough and justified description of
what signs depict and mean. Only then can one answer the question how a sign
relates to other signs. I'm reminded of e.g. sign L008, a hapax sign (only one
obscure occurrence is known, with uncertain reading) that has been put under
the insects, for no reason that anyone can remember, and probably incorrectly.
Such things should never have happened. But if the same procedures are
followed for the next addition to the Unicode sign list, such calamities will
happen again.

By including even signs from Moeller that are in footnotes one is scraping the
barrel. Are we really so desperate to add as many signs as possible, no matter
for how bad a reason?

For example, 13458 refers to v3p4n1, a footnote for Moeller 36, which is
clearly identifiable with Gardiner A008. Those who can read German see that
the footnote says that the dots above the sign in some graphical variants are
"filler points", and that the sign should _not_ be associated with another
sign that is not known from hieratic, and that other sign I would read as the
man sowing seeds (A060), an existing sign. Why then that 13458 is proposed as
addition is beyond me.

As I wrote earlier, you need to analyse the meaning of signs. Only then can
you make informed decisions whether a sign is new. In many cases this requires
expert knowledge of hieratic and/or looking at signs in context in the
original hieratic documents. Two examples I spotted during superficial inspection:

* Consider 13482 for Moeller 257. If this is _not_ K4 (as it obviously is
according to Goedicke and the reading "XA" in Moeller) then you need to
explain why not. What reading, use or purpose would set this sign apart from
this or any other existing sign?

* I suspect all of us may have made wrong guesses based on appearances.  For
example, A051 for Moeller 27 (here proposed as a new sign 13452) may be wrong.
Goedicke associates this with A042 instead. Because A51 and A42 share some
uses, e.g. first-person ending, looking at one or two occurrences in hieratic
texts may not even suffice to decide which is which.

Are we aware that obtaining any certainty on such matters will require serious
effort? Then the next question is, is it worth it? Or does it do more harm
than good?

Mark-Jan

On Friday 16 Sep 2016 14:58:19 Deborah W. Anderson wrote:
> Dear list members,
> Michael has submitted a preliminary proposal for additional characters,
> building on what he circulated at the Cambridge meeting.
> The document is located at:
> http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16250-n4741-moller-egyptian.pdf
>
> I have sent it on to the group at Mainz, and they will be able to comment on
> it by early October. I have also send it to Barbara Lüscher in Basel.
>
> The proposal document mentions: "Experts are needed to carefully check
> Vervloesem's suggested mappings against Nederhof's
> and Richmond's suggested mappings."
>
> To assist in this endeavor, I created a spreadsheet showing the suggested
> mappings by Vervloesem, Richmond, and Nederhof for the newly proposed
> characters, as well as other characters in Moeller.
>
> The Excel spreadsheet is available at:
> http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16251-n4742-moller-mapping.xlsx
> FYI: Grey highlighting in the spreadsheet indicates the newly proposed
> characters for which Vervloesem, Richmond, and/or Nederhof have proposed a
> mapping to Gardiner (/Unicode).
> Yellow highlighting indicates newly proposed characters for which there is
> no proposed mapping.
>
> A document describing the spreadsheet is posted at:
> http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16251-n4742-moller-mapping.pdf  . (This
> document contains the spreadsheet but in very tiny print.)
>
> Let me know if there are others whom you suggest I send this message to.
>
> With best wishes,
> Debbie
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Egyptian mailing list
> Egyptian at evertype.com<mailto:Egyptian at evertype.com>
> http://evertype.com/mailman/listinfo/egyptian_evertype.com

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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://evertype.com/pipermail/egyptian_evertype.com/attachments/20161010/3d2556ee/attachment.htm>