Standaridized variation sequences for the Desert alphabet?

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Sun Mar 26 08:37:11 CDT 2017


On 26 Mar 2017, at 14:32, David Starner <prosfilaes at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> And I'd argue that a good theoretical model of the Latin script makes ä, ꞛ and aͤ the same character, distinguished only by the font.
>> 
>> Fortunately for the users of our standard, we don’t do this.
> 
> You've yet to come up with users to whom these Deseret letters are relevant.

You might imagine it takes time to identify problems and address them. 

>> I’m fairly sure that a person citing a medieval document using aͤ may very well also need to write this alongside Swedish or German using ä.
> 
> I'm fairly sure that a person citing an early 20th century Germany document may well feel the need to cite it in Fraktur.

Fraktur is a whole-font substitition (modulo the ligatures). This is not the same thing as an editor choosing w or ƿ. Imagine if we had unified those two. After all, they both represent the same sound, right?

(Shudder.)

> In both cases, I believe that's going above and beyond the identity of the characters involved, but in your case, people do contrast the aͤ with ä, and the user case has been made. Show me the users who want to use these Deseret letters contrastingly.

Do try to be less dismissive. Firstly, *I* have published entire books in Deseret and so I myself have a legitimate interest. In the second, Iam in fact beginning discussions with relevant experts.

Michael Everson


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