[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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>Biblical-languages mailing list
>Biblical-languages at lists.ibiblio.org
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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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