Could Unicode deliver the level of paleographic detail needed for encoding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs?

William_J_G Overington wjgo_10009 at btinternet.com
Mon Mar 4 07:22:32 CST 2024


I have no expertise in Egyptology, I am however interested in Unicode 
encoding research.
 
I have been reading.
 
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2024/24045-ancient-egyptian-rotations.pdf 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2024/24045-ancient-egyptian-rotations.pdf>
 
I opine that Unicode could possibly deliver that level of palaeographic 
detail if a custom virtual machine is defined and then implemented in 
the rendering system.
 
The rotation, and any other movements and scaling, being encoded in a 
sequence of software-like commands, expressed using tag characters, 
being included in the plain text sequence.
 
Software-like yet no loops, jumps or calls, so more like a list of 
hand-entered commands to a calculator.
 
The glyphs that are manipulated would be obtained from the font. The 
obeying of the software-like sequences would be by a virtual machine in 
the rendering application.
 
Once implemented, an end user would be able to specify rotation of a 
glyph by, say, 20 degrees, using a tag character sequence of something 
like
 
20Gr
 
after the Unicode code point of the character.
 
The two character tag sequence Gr being the command to the virtual 
machine to rotate the glyph by the number of degrees previouly stated.
 
Scaling by 25% then rotating by 20 degrees by a tag sequence something 
like
 
25Gs20Gr
 
after the Unicode code point of the character.
 
The specification would need to state about which point the glyph is 
scaled and about which point the glyph is rotated.
 
Commands such as Gh and Gv for horizontal and vertical movements 
respectively, with the specification stating how to specify the 
distance: for example, percentage of the width of a unit square. There 
could be a Gi command to encode movement in and out if so desired.
 
Both positive numbers and negative numbers could be used for rotations 
and movements, so rotations could be both clockwise and 
counterclockwise, movements could be right, left, up, down, in, out.
 
Other commands could be added as required by experts who have knowledge 
about the hieroglyphs.
 
A hieroglyph made up of various glyphs, (each of which could be scaled, 
rotated, located) could be specified by a tag sequence between
 U+E007B TAG LEFT CURLY BRACKET
and
U+E007D TAG RIGHT CURLY BRACKET.
 
 
William Overington
 
Monday 4 March 2024
 
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