From ybf2u@curry.edschool.virginia.edu Tue Feb 7 23:57:39 1995 Received: from moose.cs.indiana.edu by whale.cs.indiana.edu (5.65c/9.4jsm) id AA14635; Tue, 7 Feb 1995 23:57:39 -0500 Received: from virginia.edu (uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU) by moose.cs.indiana.edu (5.65c/9.4jsm) id AA23712; Tue, 7 Feb 1995 23:57:38 -0500 Received: from curry.edschool.virginia.edu by uvaarpa.virginia.edu id aa14880; 7 Feb 95 23:57 EST Received: (from ybf2u@localhost) by curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU (8.6.8/8.6.6) id XAA73624; Tue, 7 Feb 1995 23:57:34 -0500 From: Yitna Benyam Firdyiwek Message-Id: <199502080457.XAA73624@curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU> Subject: Re: document To: dmulholl@cs.indiana.edu Date: Tue, 7 Feb 95 23:57:34 EST Cc: fisseha@cig.mot.com In-Reply-To: <199502071713.LAA04967@gerbil.cig.mot.com>; from "Yonas Fisseha" at Feb 7, 95 11:13 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3.1 PL11] Status: R selam Yonas, danEl, > > > > + Glyphs & Ligatures > > * 7 diacritical marks to aid composition of unknown characters > > if including diacritics, should we include every possible (i counted ~15 > but im sure there is more) diacritic? we have to think about diacritics > more. we cant use them as place holders imho since standards are meant > to be incremental (ie backwards compatible) so we can only add not > delete/change characters. what are your opinions? also if new chars > can be composed using diacritics, why not the old ones too? > I have to agree with Yonas if what is meant by diacritics includes every variation of every vowel in the system. In that case, there would be many more than 15 or so. Or if we use them only as place-holders. However, my original understanding was that the diacritical marks will only be for the vowel variations (i.e., the number of columns we end up with--7, 8, or 12). The purpose of these marks would be, primarily (I believe) to allow for a system using the "decomposed" structure of the syllabary. In this case, the actual shape of the diacritc (which varies even in the same vowel) would not matter; we would just be holding a place (permanently) for each vowel "form." One problem I see in this approach is that we may be inviting excatly the type of question Yonas is asking--why not compose all of the characters this way. This is Dr. Anderson's proposal. The argument against it is simply that the Ethiopic writing system is syllabic. It might be better to see the diacritical marks simply as "elements" in the language. By this I mean treat them as symbols--sort of the way they appear on Ethiopian typewriters to indicate the form (usually a box with the vowel position on one of its corners or sides). They could go with the numbers and punctuation at the beginning. The general order seems pretty good to me. yTna