Kaixo!
On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 01:24:41AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
Tengwar, like Klingon, is not in the Unicode standard, although it is a part of the conscript registry. Spaces used by the conscript registry for Tengwar are used by diffferent fonts for different characters - I have one that uses it for Chinese characters, and another one that uses the Klingon space for Arabic calligraphic forms.
Conscript space should be avoided indeed. It was mostly useful whe ncomputers couldn't handle real unicode (which isn't limited to BMP).
Tengwar is alwo encoded on plane 17 (I think) in a space that is guaranteed to not conflict with other writtings; there are fonts supporting it. So that should be the used encoding.
And there is always the possibility to convert from one encoding to the other, like in the Chinese wikipedia.
A wiki were people could write in tengwar would indeed be a good thing; but it shouldn't be a wikipedia. It should be a different project (even if using the same software).
On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 23:55:05 -0500, Stephen Forrest
It seems to me to be a reasonable thing to insist that a language must have at one time been a native tongue of some human population in order for it to be granted a wikipedia.
No! With that criterium the Esperanto wikipedia would have been denied.
The focus shouldn't be on the language itself on a linguistic level (that would be vain, as all languages are linguistically equal); but on the sociologic level, focus on the speakers community and what they want to do. If there is a real will to write an encyclopedia, then it should be accepted, whatever the language; but if there isn't a will to write an encyclopedia of human knowledge, then it shouldn't (and I insist on *human* knowledge; while an encyclopedia on the world of the Middle Earth would be a very nice project, it doesn't fit Wikipedia).