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

[Asmus Freytag]

What you are describing is rich text. Anytime you add "special 
commands", no matter how you encode them, you have rich text. (There is 
a small amount of gray zone, in which characters like SHY, NBSP and TAB 
can be understood as still being "plain text", but a syntax for a 
virtual rotation machine is definitely beyond the scope).

A./


On 3/4/2024 5:22 AM, William_J_G Overington via Unicode wrote:
>
> 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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