Talk:DAB

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DAB

Translingual section (transliteration of a cuneiform sign). If I remember correctly, we don't do transliterations unless native speakers use them. Could be wrong, but I think all the native speakers died well before Latin characters were invented, so..... -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Not sure. I seem to remember a discussion about extinct languages regularly written in transcription in scholarly works. I think it was a discussion about Egyptian hieroglyphics or perhaps Coptic, but I can't locate it. Anyone else remember something of this that might help locate the discussion? --EncycloPetey 08:09, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if this is relevant, but we're currently using transliterations for a number of ancient languages whose scripts are not yet unicode supported, such as hieroglyphics and the Tocharians. However, it is my understanding that this is a temporary measure, until those scripts become supported. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Keep Yes, it is typical for Akkadian, or Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform signs to be Latinised and I doubt strongly that the questionmark appearing as ("the Cuneiform sign ? ") could ever be comprehensive for anyone. There are transition rules and lists with original and Latinised signs, but in none of the two or three I had seen were the cuneiform signs digitalised, but instead rendered with the help of images, which are the only sensible way (hitherto) for Akkadian, Ugaritic and Eblaite and since original cuneiform signs are absent from Unicode (now and in foreseeable future) and the Latin correspondence is the only wise to reach the original source (in digitalised texts, printing books is another matter) besides .png, .tiff or whatsoever images, I oppose the deletion. Bogorm 22:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete Cuneiform is present in Unicode, in all it's glorious varieties of signs as they evolved merged to the same code points which should in theory be handled at the font-level (imagine Phoenician and Greek alpha and Latin 'a' all to be handled at font-display level!!) But it will take a lots of time until all the switches inside the {{Xsux}} get proper font support. Ugaritic is also present at unicode (see Appendix:Ugaritic abjad). The policy is to write languges in original script, and creating dozens of ===Transliteration=== redirects for every phonetic transcription of 𒁳 that was reconstructed to be used for writing languages in 3 different families (IE, Semitic and Sumerian which is language isolate) would not be reasonable, as the 𒁳 is already reachable by using usual search on DAB [1] --Ivan Štambuk 23:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I do not know about which Unicode you are talking, but my OS based on UTF-16 is displaying but questionmarks and I do not dare to know what happens to the users with OS relying on UTF-8, but if you speak of some imaginary UTF-256, yes, perchance the Akkadian and Eblaite cuneiforms may be included there. As for now, leaving the reader with the questionmarks alone and with not image represantation would be too merciless. In addition, Burmese alphabet, wherever I come across it in Wikipedia, is too rendered as questionmarks and I am sure that if Unicode does not comprise a living language spoken by 40 000 000, one should be far more cautious in what concerns ancient ones. Bogorm 08:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Bogorm, you have already established on numerous occasions that you cannot see (or cannot see properly) a great number of scripts that others can. Thus, I think that the fact that you cannot see something is not great evidence that no one can see it. However, with the pending discussion concerning transliterations, I think we should hold off on deleting this. Inasmuch as I would very much like to see this entry go away, if the community decides that transliteration entries are something we want........then I have no power to stop them......much to my chagrin. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I am using a quite modern operating system(from the current decade), live in a European Union state and cannot see this rare, advanced and complicated scripts. Have you ever thought that readers of Wiktionary with even older software should not be repelled from Wiktionary, that in India and Africa there are innumerable users of Windows 98 or Windows 95, when no Unicode was in question at all and that they deserve at least a little bit of mercy from self-conceit users from developped countries (not all of them are such, hopefully you neither) ? Transliteration entries for languages outside Unicode (UTF-8) should at any cost be preserved in order to show understanding for the mentioned users and because one ought not to embrace any innovation and to impose it on others. Bogorm 09:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I can only pity users of Win9x and other non-Unicode OSes. There are several free and Unicode compliant cuneiform fonts available on the Web, one trivial search query away, for anybody to use. There should probably be some kind of appendix discussing these "obscure fonts", where to get them and how to install them, on language-specific basis, and this was already partially discussed in BP for some Old Persian entries. One special problem with cuneiform is that it cannot be really "transliterated" as one sign had lots of (reconstructed) phonetic values in various languages it was used, so what gives DAB more prominence than DIB, not to mention akkadian sequence of dib, dip, dab, dap, tib, tip, ṭib, ṭip listed in the entry? Search on transliteration cupled with the keyword of "cuneiform" or "sumerian" yields proper-script entry immediately, usually as the first search result, so it shouldn't be out of reach of anyone willing to utilize his brain cells instead of figuring out how to copy/paste Akkadian.otf to his %WINDIR%\Fonts folder.. --Ivan Štambuk 10:37, 16 August 2008 (UTC)