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<p>Because *quadrats* are sequences of independent signs organized
into square boxes for presentation. They are conceived of that way
by modern day Egyptologists, and presumably also by the people who
wrote them millennia ago.</p>
<p>Although both hieroglyphics and Han characters are graphically
complex and both have concepts of dynamic (and somewhat recursive)
principles for construction of more complex forms, when examined
in detail the systems are quite distinct. And the way the writing
systems map onto the languages involved is quite distinct as well.</p>
<p>And then there is the simple fact of precedent, which weighs
heavily on encoding decisions for complex scripts.</p>
<p>For Han, we started with the existing fact of implemented JIS and
GB systems and all their cousins, which encoded Han characters
atomically (by necessity), and treated the dynamic structure of
Han characters the same way almost all CJK dictionaries do: by
enumerated list.</p>
<p>For Egyptian hieroglyphs we started with the Gardiner list of
*signs* (fundamental to Egyptian study). Gardiner and
Egyptologists (and the implementations) subsequently assumed that
quadrats are built up from the signs dynamically. The atomic unit
is not the quadrat.<br>
</p>
<p>--Ken<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/5/2021 6:25 AM, abrahamgross---
via Unicode wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:65ed13f8-cb0e-41b7-9a14-765a9bb45c6c@disroot.org"><span
dir="ltr" style="font-family:sans-serif;margin-top:0;
margin-bottom:0">Looking at TUS ยง11.4 Egyptian Hieroglyphs you
can see that there they decided to yes use control characters to
shape complex characters. </span> <br>
<span dir="ltr" style="font-family:sans-serif;margin-top:0;
margin-bottom:0">Anyone know why that is?</span></blockquote>
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