Subject: Re: Unicode/10646 History (was Re: [idn] An ignorant question about TC<-> SC)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 23:33:31 EST

In a message dated 2001-11-01 17:55:38 Pacific Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

>  If Pharonic Egyptian isn't as important as bidi and Arabic, what living
>  languages is it less important than?
>
>  How much time has the UTC spent on Pharonic Egyptian?
>  On Experanto?
>  On Klingon?
>  On Runic?
>  On Ogham?
>  On the rest of the epigraphic manias? Don't forget the time spent by the
>  Scripts Working Group.

The UTC has already done bidi and Arabic, long ago.  What is the point being 
made here, about other things being more important than bidi and Arabic?

Sorry for butting in.  I'm not a UTC member, I just wish I were sometimes.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California

---

From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 00:11:25 -0500

Doug,

Thus far, we (the IETF) haven't done bidi and Arabic. At some point Ken was
writing to the relative importance of Pharonic Egyptian -- a feature of the
Unicode work. Unfortunately, whatever value that feature has, and any of a
similar nature, and the (incomensurably greater) value of the work on Arabic
and bidi, we have an unsolved problem.

The point being made in the note you replied to is that a) epigraphic pseudo
scholarship (I confess to being biased by all the Runic and Ogham "writings"
miraculously found in the Americas) and classical scholarship are not works
directed at delivery of mass-literacy or mass-access to information, and b)
that speculation that a product is useful in a specific application (theirs,
in ours), is problematic. Time and energy spent on a) and not spent on b) is
misplaced, or expended with some risk.

Don't apologize for "butting in", we're done anyway. Ken's conceeded that
the POSIX vendors couldn't tell a Unicode from a Ukulele, and I've conceeded
that a Maine paper mill was involved in Unicode, so it wasn't just a printer
consortia, and we're both dimly aware that some scripts aren't yet encoded.

I'll let Ken induct you into the UTC. I've forgotten the handshake.

Eric