On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:29 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
So, thirty more to play with. I would like on principle for us to include a dead system or two - even if we don't work in them, it's a nice nod to include cuneiform or demotic Egyptian. I would have said 'Mayan', but that's far too complex for us! (Another dead system which we might want to consider: Ogham, since it has a very nice "ui-" character, Uilleann.)
I think it would be excellent to include some scripts that are no longer in use. The logo combines the ideas that knowledge is diverse, by use of different writing systems, and that accumulating knowledge is an ongoing process, through use of the unfinished puzzle. I feel that historically important scripts that are no longer in use fit neatly into both of these concepts. To get self-important for a minute, the logo's also about showing Wikipedia's place as perhaps the latest evolution in the long tradition of accumulating and relaying knowledge, and including, say, something cuneiform would speak volumes in this direction.
Priority probably should be given to incorporating scripts that represent as many of the extant language editions of Wikipedia as possible. This task is simplified to a great degree by the fact that many scripts cover multiple languages: the Latin alphabet, most obviously, but also the Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari and Georgian alphabets and Chinese-derived scripts. Throw in Greek, Ge'ez, Khmer, Armenian and Sinhala and you've pretty much covered all the Wikipedias. Add important variants of these and you've still only covered the front of the globe. There'll be heaps of room for important historical languages.