[Biblical-languages] character for papyri sign
Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk at ntlworld.com
Wed Jun 11 04:37:58 EDT 2003
Peter_Constable at sil.org wrote:
>A proposal has been submitted to the Unicode Consortium to encode a new
>character PAPYRUS SIGN. I have submitted a document with some comments. If
>anyone is interested, my doc is available at
>http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=PCUnicodeDocs.
>
>
>
>
>- Peter
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Peter Constable
>
>Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
>7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
>Tel: +1 972 708 7485
>
>
>
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>
Peter, this seems a sensible response, to a proposal which at first
sight makes sense but is actually rather flawed. I see another problem
with Freytag's proposal which is that this is by no means the only
Fraktur letter used in biblical textual criticism. Indeed much of the
alphabet is used in some cases e.g. the BHS Hebrew Bible which uses
Fraktur forms at least of AÄBCGKLMQSTV (prolegomena pp. XLIV-XLVIII -
this looks like the source of the list in SIL Apparatus), the
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon (pp. xiii-xix) uses GHSTV. So by the
logic of Freytag's proposal we would end up with an entire Fraktur
alphabet. Much better to use the one we already have. Perhaps Freytag's
problem is that he wants to use applications which only support the BMP.
But he won't get an entire alphabet on BMP. I would suggest a sensible
compromise that a note be made somewhere in the standard that these
"mathematical" characters are also suitable for such situations.
There are many other signs or sigla used in textual criticism which are
not in Unicode. Have any concrete proposals been made for these? There
is also a Samaritan Pentateuch sign uses in BHS (prolegomena p. XLIV)
and in SIL Apparatus, which looks a bit like an upside down script m and
is supposed to be a Samaritan shin.
--
Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk at ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
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