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

[William_J_G Overington]

Asmus Freytag wrote as follows:
> 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).
Thank you for replying.
Is what I suggest any less plain text than is the tag sequence specified 
for the Welsh flag? If so, why?
At present, if I understand it correctly, special commands have been 
added into plain text in the form of extra characters for formatting 
hieroglyphs.
I suggest that using this software-like approach allows far greater 
possibilities than can reasonable be produced by adding an extra 
character into Unicode for each possibility.
This software-like approach means that any rotation angle can be 
specified.
I opine that if the scope of plain text in a definition from long ago 
needs to be changed so as to allow progress into the future then that 
needs to be done.
I have since making my earlier post realized that a command Gm needs to 
be added so that a glyph can be horizontally mirrored if so desired.
Other commands and features can be added straightforwardly to this 
software-like system. 
I opine that whether the method that I have suggested goes forward and 
becomes part of Unicode should depend on whether it is regarded by the 
Egyptologists who would use it as a method that they consider as being 
of benefit.
William Overington
Monday 4 March 2024
 
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