[XeTeX] Egyptian hieroglyphs in XeTeX (Benct Philip Jonsson)

[Robert B. Gozzoli]

Dear Benct and David
I thank you for the discussion, but the problem is not exactly
palaeographical, just to answer to Benct. I still need a photo or a
facsimile in order to do palaeography. But this is also true for any
language, unless you can reproduce ligatures, styles used for that
period etc. If I read a Latin text in a Teubner edition, I confess I
do not care whatever is the font, what I need is the Latin text. The
notes will tell me about the graphic style of the manuscript, if it is
a copy of that Irish monastery, or an Italian copy from the Laurentian
Library. Or I have to buy a very expensive commentary do be informed
about it.
What I would like is just typing hieroglyphs in Unicode format, yet
maintaining the scaling and grouping typical of the writing. I cannot
type A1 B2 H8 C3, and having those signs one after the other. This is
not the language I have been studying, but I should have something
like this (Please see attached file, a text in the Museum of Berlin).
The example is quite complicated, as it needs mirroring of the signs,
clustering and grouping.
 But the 1,000 plus signs are now there, and the font already exists
too. So what is for, if there is no way to use it, apart from doing
beautiful lines of hieros for decorating the pages?
I partially understand that I can do something like this if I use
Graphite, but I do not care about that, as I would like to use it in
XeTeX.
Of course, I can continue to use my own hieroglyphic word processor
and paste the .eps or .tif file, but I would like to do somethimg more
(Xe)TeX friendly with fonts.

Any help appreciated,

Robert



> Message: 6
> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:11:41 +0200
> From: Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj at melroch.se>
> To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms <xetex at tug.org>
> Subject: Re: [XeTeX] Egyptian hieroglyphs in XeTeX
> Message-ID: <4A94376D.3030601 at melroch.se>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> David Perry skrev:
>>
>>
>> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
>> [not a fan of Unicode hieroglyphics]
>
> I didn't say that. I just pointed out why there will
> not be any russh towards reproducing ancient texts in
> facsimile, or toward producing fonts for that purpose.
>
>> (I do realize there are significant issues of standardization,
>> but if those had not been sufficiently addressed I doubt that
>> the Unicode Technical Committee would have approved the
>> proposal.)
>
> That's precisely the problem: creating an image of
> standardization where none exited in ancient times.
> For the reproduction of linguistic content is no
> facsimile is needed, and for discussing the actual marks
> in MSS facsimile is not sufficient.
>
> /BP
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: hiertex.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 412593 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/attachments/20090827/2d83652a/attachment-0001.pdf>