Unicode 11 Georgian uppercase vs. fonts

Michael Everson via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Fri Jul 27 07:55:15 CDT 2018


On 27 Jul 2018, at 13:28, Alexey Ostrovsky via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 3:44 PM, Michael Everson via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>> You have me to thank for undoing that mistake. And some other mistakes. We all make mistakes. 
> 
> I would like to avoid personal discussions if possible. 

You are addressing the author of N2608R2 and N4712. I will say what I want about the documents I wrote and the ideas in them. 

>> > Those institutes were consulted. I met with representatives of both of them on my trip to Tbilisi to work with the font designers who spearheaded this project. The analysis in N4712 is correct. 
> 
> Could you please comment how the samples in photos prove that it is not small caps? 

Where, in N4712? There are NO EXAMPLES of small caps in N4712. To use Latin examples (with explicitly-encoded Latin small caps:

mtavruli is lowercase, ᴍᴛᴀᴠʀᴜʟɪ is small caps, MTAVRULI is uppercase.

There is no evidence of Georgian being written in small caps. 

> N4712 does not contain analysis on that, only statements. (Simple assertions that it is correct will add nothing to what is already stated in N4712.)

If you want to continue this line of argument, you have to cite individual Figures in N4712 and say what you think about them. The analysis in N4712 is sound, and convinced the Georgian authorities and the UTC to encode the characters which have been encoded.

You are going to have to live with them. 

>> So don’t go quoting me in 2003 in order to argue against me in 2016.
> 
> I will quote what I think is appropriate, please.

Do what you want. I was wrong in 2003, because I made the same mistaken assumption you have made. If the title-casing material had been available to me, I would have made a different analysis. 

> Also, note that the quote was made to demonstrate that N4712 denies what was stated in N2608R2, introduces some changes, and then re-asserts some of denied statements.

I am the author of N4712. I deny what I stated in N2608R2, of which I am the author. What I said in N2608R2 was based on a mistaken analysis. 

> The mistake in interpretation is yours. Here:
> 1) Latin script cases. It has capital letters and small letters.

Is this true? Yes or no. 

> 1a) English orthography uses capital letters at the beginnings of sentences and of names and of the names of the months and weekdays. Sometimes ALL CAPS are used.

The boy shouted “HELLO!” to Thomas from his car on Tuesday.

> 1b) French orthography uses capital letters at the beginnings of sentences and of names but not at the beginnings of the names of the months and weekdays. Sometimes ALL CAPS are used.

Le garçon a crié “BONJOUR!” à Thomas de sa voiture le mardi.

> 1c) German orthography uses capital letters at the beginnings of sentences and of names and of the names of the months and weekdays. Sometimes ALL CAPS are used, but not in Fraktur font styles.

Am Dienstag rief der Junge  “HALLO!" zu Thomas aus seinem Auto.

(In Fraktur one would write “ℌ��������!” not “ℌ��������!”.)

> 2) Georgian script cases. It has capital letters and small letters.
> 2a) When Georgian orthography uses capital letters it uses them on every letter in the word where they are used, regardless of what kind of word it is.
> 
> This is the same as small caps style, it cannot be used to assert existence of cases.

It is not, for two reasons. First, small caps is pretty much writing capital letters the height of small letters. In the UCS, you can apply small caps styling to Adlam, Armenian, Cherokee, Coptic, Cyrillic, Deseret, Glagolitic, Greek, Khutsuri Latin, Ol Chiki, Old Hungarian — and now Georgian.

> 2b) In the 19th and early 20th century there was an orthography which used capital letters at the beginnings of sentences and of names, as well as full-word ALL CAPS. 
> 
> No, there were attempts in some books. 

Yes, and those books are things. They are facts. They can be read. Now, they can be transcribed accurately in Unicode. And the examples in N4712 are dated 1865, 1876, 1890, 1912, 1913, and 1924. Publishers did this on purpose. They invested money in producing books which they expected to sell to readers. The orthographic experiment was not a success. 

> > The key question is whether Georgian is caseless or not in plain text encoding, and N2608R2 does not provide any evidence for casing in modern Georgian. 
> N2608R2 was written in 2003 and has been superceded by N4712. Mtavruli is ALL CAPS. Mtavruli is not small caps.
> <...> 
> Mtavruli is not small caps. Mtavruli is ALL CAPS. 
>  
> This is the key statement. How can you prove that?

1) In 19th and early 20th-century texts they are not mixing small caps with Mkhedruli. They are writing Mtavruli, not ᴍtavruli. 

2) There can be no small caps style without encoded capital letters. 

There is no problem. There was a problem. I and my Georgian colleagues Nika Gujejiani and Akaki Razmadze solved it, working with others, garnering consensus, and now it is done. It cannot be undone. Live with it. 

Michael Everson


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