I first mentioned Simplified Egyptian on this blog back in 2010, Simplified Egyptian: A brief Introduction, although the idea goes back several years before then.
The basis of Simplified Egyptian is to embed standard rules inside a font or functional equivalent (typically OpenType font) to instruct font rendering to combine hieroglyphs into predefined groups (much like the ligature ‘e’ with ‘acute’ normally combines into é e-acute).
So, why is it taking so long to implement? The first prerequisite to making Simplified Egyptian available in useful form was adding Egyptian Hieroglyphs to the Unicode standard (initiated 2006, finally released with Unicode 5.2 in October 2009). However a standard is necessary but not sufficient, popular Operating Systems (e.g. Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android) need to adequately support the standard. It is also essential that tools such as internet browsers, word processors and so on support standards compliant behaviour. Progress has been slow on all these fronts, disappointingly so.
Two positive developments during the last few months.
1. OpenType now (almost) formally recognizes the ‘egyp’ tag for fonts containing Egyptian Hieroglyphs (see http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/scripttags.htm updated October 4, 2011 to bring the standard up to date, matching Unicode developments in recent years).
2. Firefox now recognizes ligatures in Egyptian fonts (not sure exactly when this happened but my test font was first seen to work correctly in Firefox 10 on Windows). Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari haven’t seen any progress in the 18 months since I published Egyptian Hieroglyphs on the Web (October 2010).
One minor negative two weeks ago. The Windows 8 consumer preview really ought to have worked since Unicode 6.x support is part of the design. However my Egyptian tests failed for Internet Explorer and several other programs and software interfaces. Hopefully those bugs will be shaken out before release and similar progress will be seen in OS X, iOS and Android before the end of 2012.
Looking at the trend it seems likely that by this time next year there will be enough pieces of the puzzle coming together to enable some useful Simplified Egyptian use scenarios on a variety of fully up to date systems with up to date software. Realistically, however, for most people 'up to date' is unlikely. Android phones are often stuck with obsolete versions of Android. Windows computers last for ages nowadays yet the cost of upgrading a version of Windows and Microsoft Office is normally prohibitively high for most people and organizations. As a rough estimate, it is going to take 3+ years before 25% of PCs (including tablets, excluding phones) are Simplified Egyptian capable.
Moving forward. Despite the apparently slow opportunities for uptake it seems worth starting the ball rolling now. Last year I created a list of about 1200 candidate rules for an implementation of Simplified Egyptian to test against the dictionary database and some sample documents. Further work is needed but I hope to provide a test implementation in InScribeX Web along with a Simplified Egyptian font this year, initially using a draft specification for the rules. IXW can be used to make sample web pages (using a downloadable version of the font) which we now know will be readable in Firefox at least. This work to be followed by ample time for comment and feedback on the specification from all, including experts in the subject. Timescales depend on when I can find some spare time (unless anyone knows of any funding!) but if all goes well, by around this time next year there will be a useable Simplified Egyptian system with at least some PC systems and a few standard apps that can use it. Then, as people upgrade systems and developers upgrade apps SE can reach out to an increasing audience.
Unfortunately a slow process with pitfalls e.g. web pages that only look correct on modern browsers unless we see a change in the habits of Apple, Google, Microsoft and other PC and device manufacturers. Most people working with hieroglyphs in software will continue to mainly use MdC-based solutions for some years to come on desktop/laptop systems. A topic I'll return to shortly.
Showing posts with label Simplified Egyptian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Simplified Egyptian. Show all posts
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
InScribeX Web 3.5 available
The InScribeX Web software is now updated to preview version 3.5, replacing the previous version 3.4. The software now integrates about 30,500 references in the Egyptian dictionary database, and the accuracy level of the database has been substantially improved over 3.4. Apart from some minor performance oriented changes, there is no change to software functionality.
3.5 is the last of the 3.x series. I hope to continue the periodic update process every two to three months during 2012 as was done last year. I'm currently shooting for a 4.0 version in the Spring.
4.0 contains some usability changes and continues to support Windows and OSX platforms via Silverlight. It drops any attempt to support Linux desktop. My main objectives moving IXW forward this year are to 1. incorporate tools to enable use of Simplified Egyptian and 2. Make it easier to use Egyptian with Unicode in an up to date HTML5 Web browser context.
A note on Linux. When I started writing InScribeX Web the situation with Linux on desktop and laptop PCs looked fairly promising. Moonlight (the Linux equivalent of the Silverlight software used to deliver InScribeX in a web browser) was under active development by Novell. Since then, Linux has been very successful as the foundation of the proprietory Google Android operating system for mobile devices but interest in Linux desktop as an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX has declined, not grown. The demise of Novell as an independent company caused Moonlight development to stop in an incomplete state meaning it is no longer realistic to take the current implementation of InScribeX Web onto the Linux desktop. This fact is only one consequence of the fact that the whole cross-platform perspective has changed in recent years thanks to low power microelectronics enabling interesting mobile devices. A topic I'd like to return to in the near future.
3.5 is the last of the 3.x series. I hope to continue the periodic update process every two to three months during 2012 as was done last year. I'm currently shooting for a 4.0 version in the Spring.
4.0 contains some usability changes and continues to support Windows and OSX platforms via Silverlight. It drops any attempt to support Linux desktop. My main objectives moving IXW forward this year are to 1. incorporate tools to enable use of Simplified Egyptian and 2. Make it easier to use Egyptian with Unicode in an up to date HTML5 Web browser context.
A note on Linux. When I started writing InScribeX Web the situation with Linux on desktop and laptop PCs looked fairly promising. Moonlight (the Linux equivalent of the Silverlight software used to deliver InScribeX in a web browser) was under active development by Novell. Since then, Linux has been very successful as the foundation of the proprietory Google Android operating system for mobile devices but interest in Linux desktop as an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX has declined, not grown. The demise of Novell as an independent company caused Moonlight development to stop in an incomplete state meaning it is no longer realistic to take the current implementation of InScribeX Web onto the Linux desktop. This fact is only one consequence of the fact that the whole cross-platform perspective has changed in recent years thanks to low power microelectronics enabling interesting mobile devices. A topic I'd like to return to in the near future.
Friday, 9 September 2011
InScribeX Web directions (September 2011)
Next week Microsoft will be making announcements about Windows 8 and I expect this will raise speculation on software futures in the press. So now seems like a good time to forestall any questions about any implications for InScribeX Web directions over the next year or so.
In short, Silverlight/.Net has been a successful technical choice for development of IXW to date and I plan to continue to use Silverlight through 2012 to further evolve IXW and explore more aspects of Ancient Egyptian in Unicode as a cross-platform Mac OSX/Windows (XP and later) solution.
Nevertheless there are some other desirable developments in Ancient Egyptian on computer that don’t fit into the IXW cross-platform approach, for instance deeper integration with other applications and efficient support for a variety of low power and touch screen devices. I’d like to share some thinking on these topics here in the near future.
Meanwhile IXW is currently at Preview 3.3 (the third update this year) and I’m on track for a 3.4 release next month. The ‘preview 3’ series to wrap this Winter with 3.5 which completes the first draft of the word list/dictionaries and incorporates more analysis on sign lists.
I’ve been holding back user interface changes until Preview 4 which is intended to enable continuation of the step by step approach I’ve taken this year. Whereas the 2011 theme has been building a more comprehensive dictionary, the main 2012 theme is teasing out the relationships between ‘Simplified Egyptian’, hieroglyphs in Unicode, and MdC encodings and I hope to continue the dynamic of updates every 2/3 months in the 4.x framework. More on this closer to the time.
In short, Silverlight/.Net has been a successful technical choice for development of IXW to date and I plan to continue to use Silverlight through 2012 to further evolve IXW and explore more aspects of Ancient Egyptian in Unicode as a cross-platform Mac OSX/Windows (XP and later) solution.
Nevertheless there are some other desirable developments in Ancient Egyptian on computer that don’t fit into the IXW cross-platform approach, for instance deeper integration with other applications and efficient support for a variety of low power and touch screen devices. I’d like to share some thinking on these topics here in the near future.
Meanwhile IXW is currently at Preview 3.3 (the third update this year) and I’m on track for a 3.4 release next month. The ‘preview 3’ series to wrap this Winter with 3.5 which completes the first draft of the word list/dictionaries and incorporates more analysis on sign lists.
I’ve been holding back user interface changes until Preview 4 which is intended to enable continuation of the step by step approach I’ve taken this year. Whereas the 2011 theme has been building a more comprehensive dictionary, the main 2012 theme is teasing out the relationships between ‘Simplified Egyptian’, hieroglyphs in Unicode, and MdC encodings and I hope to continue the dynamic of updates every 2/3 months in the 4.x framework. More on this closer to the time.
Monday, 8 November 2010
Simplified Egyptian: Numerals
This is the second of a series of notes on a systematic way of working with Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs in Unicode, following up from Simplified Egyptian: A brief Introduction.
What follows makes a lot more sense if you have a hieroglyphic font installed, see my post Egyptian Hieroglyphs on the Web (October 2010).
Ancient Egyptian, in common with other early mathematical systems, had no notion of negative integers or the digit Zero. The Egyptian numeral system is not positional in the modern sense. It is nevertheless straightforward to decode. Examples:
Egyptian 𓎉𓏻 is 42 (𓎉 represents 40, 𓏻 represents 2).
Egyptian 𓆿𓍣𓎉𓏻 is 4,242 (𓆿 represents 4000, 𓍣 represents 200).
Our modern decimal system uses positional notation where the numerals 0, 1 … 9 are used to represent units, tens, hundreds etc. by virtue of position. The Ancient Egyptians used different symbols based on a tally system as should be obvious from the examples. Fortunately, one similarity to modern notation is that the higher magnitude quantities were normally written first (i.e. to the left in Simplified Egyptian, which is always written left to right).
Normalized forms of numerals
The following list gives the preferred representation of hieroglyphs in Unicode for numerals in Simplified Egyptian.
1 to 9: 𓏺, 𓏻, 𓏼, 𓏽, 𓏾,𓏿, 𓐀, 𓐁, 𓐂.
10 to 90: 𓎆, 𓎇,𓎈, 𓎉, 𓎊, 𓎋, 𓎌, 𓎍, 𓎎.
100 to 900: 𓍢, 𓍣, 𓍤, 𓍦, 𓍦, 𓍧, 𓍨, 𓍩, 𓍪.
1,000 to 9,000: 𓆼, 𓆽, 𓆾, 𓆿, 𓇀, 𓇁, 𓇂, 𓇃, 𓇄.
10,000 to 90,000: 𓂭, 𓂮, 𓂯, 𓂰, 𓂱, 𓂲, 𓂳, 𓂴, 𓂵.
100,000: 𓆐
1,000,000: 𓁨
Each of these forms is available in Unicode as a unique character. For instance hieroglyph 2 is the character U+133FB 𓏻 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z015A. Use these ‘normal’ forms for basic writing of numbers in Simplified Egyptian and avoid practices such as repeating 𓏺 for 𓏻 unless there is a compelling reason.
Note that large numbers such as 𓁨𓁨𓆐𓆐𓂮𓆽𓍣𓎇𓏻 2,222,222 were not generally encountered in ancient texts so replicating the 𓁨 and 𓆐 is rather anachronistic. An alternative multiplicative notation evolved for large numbers although uses are apparently rare so I’ll defer this topic for now.
Alternative forms of numerals
The use of normalized forms as given above makes it easy to find a number such as 𓎉𓏻 (42) in web documents, word processor and spreadsheet documents, and so forth (so long as software is sufficiently up to date of course). Unicode provides some alternative forms such as U+13403 𓐃 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z015I (numeral 5) but these alternates should be avoided for numerals in Simplified Egyptian where at all possible (𓐃 actually has a specific use as a fraction).
Other arrangements are found in Egyptian texts, such as the following form of 35 ( from Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, p194).
Simplified Egyptian takes the position that these kinds of numeral groups are a matter for more elaborate treatments of hieroglyphs where it is not acceptable to take license and write the number as 𓎈𓏾.
Repeating numeral 1 twice may look very much like numeral 2 in a hieroglyphic font but this practice should be avoided in Simplified Egyptian unless there is a good reason. The rationale is because most Ancient Egyptian mathematics survives in hieratic rather than hieroglyphic writing and the numerals were often simplified into a less tally-like glyph appearance. The fact that modern discussion of the hieratic often uses a hieroglyphic presentation should not detract from the original character-like behaviour. There is the important practical point that web searches and text processing work far better with normalized forms.
Rotated versions of units (e.g. 𓐄, 𓐅 …) and tens (𓎭 and 𓎮) are used in hieratic (and sometimes hieroglyphic) to number days of the month. Simplified Egyptian also adopts this convention (I hope to return to this on a topic about calendars).
Confusables
The stroke hieroglyphs U+133E4 𓏤 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z001 (representing unity and ideogram) U+133FB 𓏺 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z015A (numeral 1) are distinguished in Unicode. Fonts usually make the numeral stroke taller then the ideogram stroke, reflecting Ancient Egyptian conventions. Texts encoded in MdC often do not make this distinction but it is strongly recommended to do so in Simplified Egyptian so as to enable accurate text processing.
Likewise, the plurality signs U+133E5 𓏥 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z002 and U+133E6 𓏦 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z002A should be distinguished from numeral 3 U+133E5 𓏼 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z015B.
In some fonts, characters such as U+0131 ı LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I and U+006C l LATIN SMALL LETTER L may look very similar to the Egyptian stroke. There are various other opportunities for confusion, for instance numeral 10 𓎆 can look very similar to U+2229 ∩ INTERSECTION and some other characters.
Other examples are the special forms for 1, 2 and 3 used in dates potentially confusable with MINUS SIGN, HYPHEN and other dashes (1), EQUALS SIGN (2), and IDENTICAL TO (3) but should never appear in a context where the meaning is unclear. The special form of 10 looks rather like SUBSET OF.
Simplified Egyptian hieroglyphs should never be written with any non-Egyptian characters just beacause they look similar.
Mathematics beyond numerals
Cardinal numbers, fractions, weights, lengths, and other measurements are matters for future topics about Simplified Egyptian.
Update. Apparently, according to Google, this note is the first writing of 𓎉𓏻 on the web, a reminder it will be interesting to see how use of hieroglyphs grows in months and years to come.
What follows makes a lot more sense if you have a hieroglyphic font installed, see my post Egyptian Hieroglyphs on the Web (October 2010).
Ancient Egyptian, in common with other early mathematical systems, had no notion of negative integers or the digit Zero. The Egyptian numeral system is not positional in the modern sense. It is nevertheless straightforward to decode. Examples:
Egyptian 𓎉𓏻 is 42 (𓎉 represents 40, 𓏻 represents 2).
Egyptian 𓆿𓍣𓎉𓏻 is 4,242 (𓆿 represents 4000, 𓍣 represents 200).
Our modern decimal system uses positional notation where the numerals 0, 1 … 9 are used to represent units, tens, hundreds etc. by virtue of position. The Ancient Egyptians used different symbols based on a tally system as should be obvious from the examples. Fortunately, one similarity to modern notation is that the higher magnitude quantities were normally written first (i.e. to the left in Simplified Egyptian, which is always written left to right).
Normalized forms of numerals
The following list gives the preferred representation of hieroglyphs in Unicode for numerals in Simplified Egyptian.
1 to 9: 𓏺, 𓏻, 𓏼, 𓏽, 𓏾,𓏿, 𓐀, 𓐁, 𓐂.
10 to 90: 𓎆, 𓎇,𓎈, 𓎉, 𓎊, 𓎋, 𓎌, 𓎍, 𓎎.
100 to 900: 𓍢, 𓍣, 𓍤, 𓍦, 𓍦, 𓍧, 𓍨, 𓍩, 𓍪.
1,000 to 9,000: 𓆼, 𓆽, 𓆾, 𓆿, 𓇀, 𓇁, 𓇂, 𓇃, 𓇄.
10,000 to 90,000: 𓂭, 𓂮, 𓂯, 𓂰, 𓂱, 𓂲, 𓂳, 𓂴, 𓂵.
100,000: 𓆐
1,000,000: 𓁨
Each of these forms is available in Unicode as a unique character. For instance hieroglyph 2 is the character U+133FB 𓏻 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z015A. Use these ‘normal’ forms for basic writing of numbers in Simplified Egyptian and avoid practices such as repeating 𓏺 for 𓏻 unless there is a compelling reason.
Note that large numbers such as 𓁨𓁨𓆐𓆐𓂮𓆽𓍣𓎇𓏻 2,222,222 were not generally encountered in ancient texts so replicating the 𓁨 and 𓆐 is rather anachronistic. An alternative multiplicative notation evolved for large numbers although uses are apparently rare so I’ll defer this topic for now.
Alternative forms of numerals
The use of normalized forms as given above makes it easy to find a number such as 𓎉𓏻 (42) in web documents, word processor and spreadsheet documents, and so forth (so long as software is sufficiently up to date of course). Unicode provides some alternative forms such as U+13403 𓐃 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z015I (numeral 5) but these alternates should be avoided for numerals in Simplified Egyptian where at all possible (𓐃 actually has a specific use as a fraction).
Other arrangements are found in Egyptian texts, such as the following form of 35 ( from Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, p194).
Simplified Egyptian takes the position that these kinds of numeral groups are a matter for more elaborate treatments of hieroglyphs where it is not acceptable to take license and write the number as 𓎈𓏾.
Repeating numeral 1 twice may look very much like numeral 2 in a hieroglyphic font but this practice should be avoided in Simplified Egyptian unless there is a good reason. The rationale is because most Ancient Egyptian mathematics survives in hieratic rather than hieroglyphic writing and the numerals were often simplified into a less tally-like glyph appearance. The fact that modern discussion of the hieratic often uses a hieroglyphic presentation should not detract from the original character-like behaviour. There is the important practical point that web searches and text processing work far better with normalized forms.
Rotated versions of units (e.g. 𓐄, 𓐅 …) and tens (𓎭 and 𓎮) are used in hieratic (and sometimes hieroglyphic) to number days of the month. Simplified Egyptian also adopts this convention (I hope to return to this on a topic about calendars).
Confusables
The stroke hieroglyphs U+133E4 𓏤 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z001 (representing unity and ideogram) U+133FB 𓏺 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z015A (numeral 1) are distinguished in Unicode. Fonts usually make the numeral stroke taller then the ideogram stroke, reflecting Ancient Egyptian conventions. Texts encoded in MdC often do not make this distinction but it is strongly recommended to do so in Simplified Egyptian so as to enable accurate text processing.
Likewise, the plurality signs U+133E5 𓏥 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z002 and U+133E6 𓏦 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z002A should be distinguished from numeral 3 U+133E5 𓏼 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH Z015B.
In some fonts, characters such as U+0131 ı LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I and U+006C l LATIN SMALL LETTER L may look very similar to the Egyptian stroke. There are various other opportunities for confusion, for instance numeral 10 𓎆 can look very similar to U+2229 ∩ INTERSECTION and some other characters.
Other examples are the special forms for 1, 2 and 3 used in dates potentially confusable with MINUS SIGN, HYPHEN and other dashes (1), EQUALS SIGN (2), and IDENTICAL TO (3) but should never appear in a context where the meaning is unclear. The special form of 10 looks rather like SUBSET OF.
Simplified Egyptian hieroglyphs should never be written with any non-Egyptian characters just beacause they look similar.
Mathematics beyond numerals
Cardinal numbers, fractions, weights, lengths, and other measurements are matters for future topics about Simplified Egyptian.
Update. Apparently, according to Google, this note is the first writing of 𓎉𓏻 on the web, a reminder it will be interesting to see how use of hieroglyphs grows in months and years to come.
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Simplified Egyptian: A brief Introduction
I coined the term ‘Simplified Egyptian’ several years ago as a technical approach to making Ancient Egyptian in hieroglyphs more useable in the modern digital world (see HieroglyphsEverywhere.pdf, Bob Richmond, 2006).
The snag in creating an implementation has long been external factors such as the status of web browsers and Word Processors, along with the associated de-facto or formal industry standards. The devil is in the detail and there are many idiosyncrasies in modern technology once one departs from the everyday. A notion like Simplified Egyptian would be no more than a curiosity if it were not widely accessible on personal computers and other digital devices.
One factor in the equation was the need to include Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Unicode standard (published in Unicode 5.2, October 2009). Implementations of 5.2 are slowly becoming available; for instance Google web search now accepts hieroglyphs although Microsoft Bing and Yahoo search do not yet. Another key factor is support by Internet browsers. Firefox 3.6 looks viable now and I expect the latest versions of other popular browsers to support Egyptian to some degree within the next few months.
As various pieces of the technical puzzle appear to be coming together in the 2011 timeframe I thought it would be useful to summarise now what I see Simplified Egyptian being about. I envisage putting more flesh on the bones in future blog posts on a prototype implementation as leisure time permits (this is an unfunded project at present so time is the enemy).
Simplified Egyptian (SE) works as follows.
1. Define a subset of the Unicode 5.2 list of characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs, avoiding variants and rarely used (in Middle Egyptian) characters.
2. Define fixed rules for combining hieroglyphs into groups so these rules can be implemented in TrueType/OpenType fonts or alternative rendering methods.
3. Use left to right writing direction.
4. Define data tables and algorithms for text manipulation and sorting.
5. Define ‘normalized forms’ for guidance on ‘correct’ ways of writing and processing Simplified Egyptian.
A more recent notion - Super-Simplified Egyptian (SSE) - takes these principles further by identifying an even more condensed subset of the Hieroglyphic script, a proper subset of SE, with a palette of fewer than 200 hieroglyphs.
There is no question that the SE method is highly anachronistic, SSE extremely so. Nevertheless, there is some utility in the approach.
I am also aware that superficially what I’m proposing suggests a flavour of modernised Egyptian at odds with the requirements of Egyptology for working with an ancient language with script usage that evolved over 3000 years. I will make no apologies for the fact that this is indeed one application and if SE encourages wider understanding of Egyptian albeit at a reduced technical level that is no bad thing in my opinion. Nevertheless, the most interesting aspect from my own interest is the question of how to use such a mechanism to enable improvements for academically sound publication and study of ancient texts in the context of 3000 years of language/script evolution. A non-trivial topic I shall not touch on further today.
My plan is to make available some small working examples of Simplified Egyptian on a series of web pages during the next few weeks. These examples use a WOFF (Web Open Font Format) font derived from my InScribe font. The reasons for doing this now are twofold.
1. A new generation of Internet Browsers pays greater attention to industry standards and should be capable of supporting Simplified Egyptian. Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 are in Beta at the moment and I want to make the samples available for browser testing in case there is a need to shake out any browser bugs.
2. InScribe 3 for Windows will not use Simplified Egyptian. Originally it was my intention that SE would be a feature but it turned out to introduce too many complications in modes of use. Nevertheless, InScribe 3 retains some ‘SE-friendly’ characteristics and I want to be able to test these for real on the Web as I complete work on the software.
The samples will not work for users of older browser technology (right now this is a high ninety something per cent of internet capable devices). My short term concern is only that an elegant and simple to use implementation works as and when devices gain adequate support for internet standards.
That is not to say that workarounds can’t be contrived for devices whose manufacturers or users are not able or prepared to adapt to the new standards-based internet landscape. I'm happy to hear of any proposals.
Right now, this means use Firefox 3.6 or later to view samples as intended. I’m also tracking Chrome, Internet Explorer 9 Beta and Safari releases.
The snag in creating an implementation has long been external factors such as the status of web browsers and Word Processors, along with the associated de-facto or formal industry standards. The devil is in the detail and there are many idiosyncrasies in modern technology once one departs from the everyday. A notion like Simplified Egyptian would be no more than a curiosity if it were not widely accessible on personal computers and other digital devices.
One factor in the equation was the need to include Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Unicode standard (published in Unicode 5.2, October 2009). Implementations of 5.2 are slowly becoming available; for instance Google web search now accepts hieroglyphs although Microsoft Bing and Yahoo search do not yet. Another key factor is support by Internet browsers. Firefox 3.6 looks viable now and I expect the latest versions of other popular browsers to support Egyptian to some degree within the next few months.
As various pieces of the technical puzzle appear to be coming together in the 2011 timeframe I thought it would be useful to summarise now what I see Simplified Egyptian being about. I envisage putting more flesh on the bones in future blog posts on a prototype implementation as leisure time permits (this is an unfunded project at present so time is the enemy).
Simplified Egyptian (SE) works as follows.
1. Define a subset of the Unicode 5.2 list of characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs, avoiding variants and rarely used (in Middle Egyptian) characters.
2. Define fixed rules for combining hieroglyphs into groups so these rules can be implemented in TrueType/OpenType fonts or alternative rendering methods.
3. Use left to right writing direction.
4. Define data tables and algorithms for text manipulation and sorting.
5. Define ‘normalized forms’ for guidance on ‘correct’ ways of writing and processing Simplified Egyptian.
A more recent notion - Super-Simplified Egyptian (SSE) - takes these principles further by identifying an even more condensed subset of the Hieroglyphic script, a proper subset of SE, with a palette of fewer than 200 hieroglyphs.
There is no question that the SE method is highly anachronistic, SSE extremely so. Nevertheless, there is some utility in the approach.
I am also aware that superficially what I’m proposing suggests a flavour of modernised Egyptian at odds with the requirements of Egyptology for working with an ancient language with script usage that evolved over 3000 years. I will make no apologies for the fact that this is indeed one application and if SE encourages wider understanding of Egyptian albeit at a reduced technical level that is no bad thing in my opinion. Nevertheless, the most interesting aspect from my own interest is the question of how to use such a mechanism to enable improvements for academically sound publication and study of ancient texts in the context of 3000 years of language/script evolution. A non-trivial topic I shall not touch on further today.
My plan is to make available some small working examples of Simplified Egyptian on a series of web pages during the next few weeks. These examples use a WOFF (Web Open Font Format) font derived from my InScribe font. The reasons for doing this now are twofold.
1. A new generation of Internet Browsers pays greater attention to industry standards and should be capable of supporting Simplified Egyptian. Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 are in Beta at the moment and I want to make the samples available for browser testing in case there is a need to shake out any browser bugs.
2. InScribe 3 for Windows will not use Simplified Egyptian. Originally it was my intention that SE would be a feature but it turned out to introduce too many complications in modes of use. Nevertheless, InScribe 3 retains some ‘SE-friendly’ characteristics and I want to be able to test these for real on the Web as I complete work on the software.
The samples will not work for users of older browser technology (right now this is a high ninety something per cent of internet capable devices). My short term concern is only that an elegant and simple to use implementation works as and when devices gain adequate support for internet standards.
That is not to say that workarounds can’t be contrived for devices whose manufacturers or users are not able or prepared to adapt to the new standards-based internet landscape. I'm happy to hear of any proposals.
Right now, this means use Firefox 3.6 or later to view samples as intended. I’m also tracking Chrome, Internet Explorer 9 Beta and Safari releases.
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