L2/00-398
From: Dean A. Snyder [dean.snyder@jhu.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 5:45 AM
Cuneiform: From Clay Tablet to Computer
Participants at the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding (ICE) Conference held
at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, November 2nd and
3rd, 2000, reached consensus on key points relating to the computer
character encoding of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, the world's oldest writing
system.
In a series of animated discussions this international group of
cuneiformists, encoding experts, software engineers, linguists, and font
architects addressed the feasibility, scope, architecture, and
organizational details of such an undertaking.
Consensus was reached on the following points:
1) It is both possible and desirable to devise a computer character encoding
for Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform (hereafter "cuneiform").
2) Unicode is the appropriate technology for encoding cuneiform.
3) The encoding will not target the unrelated cuneiform script systems used
for writing texts in the Old Persian or Ugaritic languages.
4) For various scholarly reasons, the encoding of proto-cuneiform is
initially, but not necesarily ultimately, beyond the purview of the project.
5) The abstract characters of cuneiform will be encoded; information
specific to the concrete glyphs of cuneiform will be conveyed by mechanisms
above the plain-text encoding level (mechanisms such as text markup).
By "abstract characters" we mean those entities traditionally treated by
cuneiformists as distinct signs and roughly corresponding to the sign
numbers in the standard sign lists, such as those by Borger, Labat, and von
Soden. By "concrete glyphs" we mean the actual, paleographic manifestations
of those characters appearing on cuneiform tablets, inscriptions, etc.
6) [Provisional] Compound signs formed by juxtaposition will be encoded as a
sequence of two or more Unicode code points.
7) [Provisional] Compound signs formed by inscription, including those
having counterparts formed by juxtaposition, will be encoded as single
Unicode code points, in order to keep the encoding simple, and easier
to process.
8) Sign mergers and splits (of which there are expected to be 40 or so)
will be encoded using a principle of maximal distinction - when a sign has
split over time, the split forms will be separately encoded; when signs have
merged over time, the original antecedent forms will be separately encoded.
9) A five member working group will oversee the proposal process. Members of
the group include:
Lloyd Anderson, Linguist, Font Specialist, Unicode expert contributor
Karljuergen Feuerherm, Specialist in Akkadian, Computer Scientist
John Jenkins, Unicode Consortium Technical Director (East Asian Scripts)
Rick McGowan, Unicode Consortium Vice President (Japanese)
Dean Snyder, Software Engineer, Semitic Philologist
The team will be assisted by:
Simo Parpola, Prof of Assyriology, Neo-Assyrian specialist
Steve Tinney, Asst Prof, Middle Eastern Languages, Sumerian specialist
It is expected that the entire process, culminating in the formal acceptance
and adoption into Unicode of a cuneiform proposal, will take approximately
four years.
Members of the working group have agreed to make themselves available for
presentations and discussion at the following conferences:
American Oriental Society, March 2001, Toronto
Bagdad Conference, March 2001, Bagdad, Iraq
RAI, July 2001, Helsinki
____________________________________________________
The ICE email discussion list is:
cuneiform@unicode.org
____________________________________________________
The full list of ICE conference participants includes:
Dr. Lloyd B. Anderson, Linguist (historical development of writing systems,
Mayan heiroglyphs), Unicode expert contributor, Font Specialist, Proprietor
of Ecological Linguistics, Washington D.C., USA
Dr. Jerrold S. Cooper, Professor of Assyriology and Sumerian, Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
T. R. Davis, Lecturer in Bibliography & Palaeography, University of
Birmingham, England
Karljuergen Feuerherm, Ph. D. Candidate in Akkadian, University of Toronto,
Computer Scientist, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
John Jenkins, System Software Engineer (MacOS 9), Apple Computer, Unicode
Consortium Technical Director (East Asian Scripts), Salt Lake City, Utah,
USA
Dr. Alasdair Livingstone, Reader in Assyriology, University of Birmingham,
England
Rick McGowan, System Software Engineer (MacOS X, Unix), Apple Computer,
Unicode Consortium Vice President (fluent in Japanese), San Jose,
California, USA
Dr. Simo Parpola, Professor of Assyriology, University of Helsinki, Finland
Dean A. Snyder, Semitic and Classics Philologist, Software Engineer, Senior
Information Technology Specialist (Humanities), Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Steve Tinney, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Languages and
Cultures, University of Pennsylvania, Co-Director Pennsylvania Sumerian
Dictionary project, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Dr. Kenneth Whistler, Linguist (Native American Languages), Software
Engineer (Sybase), Unicode Consortium Technical Director, Managing Editor of
The Unicode Standard, version 3.0
3