Preliminary inquiry: Sigla for James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

[Erkki I Kolehmainen]

The Unicode names for the Phaistos disc (and everything else, for that
matter) would not change based on a new interpretation.

Sincerely, Erkki

-----Alkuperäinen viesti-----
Lähettäjä: Unicode [mailto:unicode-bounces at unicode.org] Puolesta catherine
butler
Lähetetty: 10. toukokuuta 2014 04:50
Vastaanottaja: unicode at unicode.org
Aihe: Re: Preliminary inquiry: Sigla for James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

"> Since the top scholars still haven't resolved the exact shapes, but all
agree on the identities being indicated (man, woman, etc), could the Unicode
leave the exact shapes up to future debate, but set aside some two-dozen
slots using Joyce's own verbal designations? (HCE, ALP, Shem, Shaun, Issy,
etc) 
That's usually not how it's done."

The Phaistos Disc's Unicode block names the characters after best-guesses of
what they depict. If it's ever solved, we might realize some guesses were
wrong, and re-draw them, but the Unicode numbering can stay the same. This
could work similarly.  The old Finnegans Wake Circular used ascii
designations: $E, $A, $I.1, etc. that everyone agrees on. But trying to
resolve subtle questions like "Is the middle horizontal of the 'E' shorter?"
by collating all handwritten exemplars will be a labor of decades...

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