Re: [css3-text] script categories, 'bicameral', 'discrete', Unicode links and more

Leif Halvard Silli scripsit:

> * Bicameral: Is there bicameral scripts that aren't discrete? If
> not, could you, instead of listing all the bicameral scripts, simply
> point to either a definition of the term 'bicameral' and/or list of
> all the bicameral scripts somewhere else in the spec? [see more on
> bicameral/unicameral below]

The word "bicameral" actually appears only once, and I think the
sentence containing it can just be dropped.

> * Clustered: Wikipedia says that Tibetan script has influenced the
> scripts Limbu, Lepcha and 'Phags-pa - they are thus probably clustered
> as well.

Such assumptions are profoundly unsafe: all three are in fact discrete,
as one can see from omniglot.com.

> * Discrete: Unicode chapter '5.18 Case Mappings' tells that Georgian 
> *has been* bicameral.                                                

Actually not.  There are three different Georgian unicameral scripts:
Asomtavruli, Nusxuri, Mxedruli.  The A/N pair have been used in a
bicameral way, and so have (much less commonly) the A/M pair.  However,
there are also many cases where each of them is used unicamerally;
unicameral use of M is the only style that is still used for new text.

-- 
John Cowan    http://ccil.org/~cowan    cowan@ccil.org
Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.  --Oscar Wilde
The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic
arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender.
                --Philip Guedalla