[XeTeX] Egyptian hieroglyphs in XeTeX

[Benct Philip Jonsson]

Arthur Reutenauer skrev:
>> "Basic Egyptian  Hieroglyphs will be published with Unicode 5.2 (expected October  2009)."
> 
>   See http://www.unicode.org/Public/5.2.0/charts/unversioned/U13000.pdf
> for the draft chart.
> 
> 	Arthur
> 

And see

<http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/unicode_epichorica.html#spoilsports>

and

<http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn3/>

for why it is not a high priority to encode
"scripts from the past"; in short there is no
standardization in these scripts -- being
written/engraved by hand there are umpteen glyph
variants for each character and sometimes even
nonce characters -- and when scholars need to
quote texts qua texts/linguistic data they
transliterate.

When the actual characters/glyphs used in the
manuscripts/inscriptions are at issue -- e.g.
using glyph types to date or locate a text -- a
font isn't very practical compared to images. In
an electronic edition one would typically indicate
the character variant used by some markup, or in a
printed work have a note saying that "this <f> is
of type 3a, referring to somewhere where the types
are presented with images, rather than faithfully
reproduce the MS glyph in print. It might have
been fun to do so, but not practical: if you
*really* want to show what the MSS look like photo-
reproduction would be the way nowadays.

As for writing teaching manuals for reading MSS I
guess there would be a need for reproducing the
actual characters, but I reckon that's what the
PUA(s) is/are for.

/BP 8^)>
-- 
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
  à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
  ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
  c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)