Chromatic fonts and Proofreading

A useful application of chromatic (or polychromatic) fonts is proofreading of text, an especially valuable technique for complex scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphic, CJK writing and mathematical notation.

I've not discovered much on the web about chromatic proofreading possibly because chromatic fonts are relatively new and not as well supported in software as might be expected. For instance macOS contained very limited polychromatic font support until the 10.13 "High Sierra" release last month. Windows Notepad still lacks polychromatic font support (as of the Windows 10 "Fall Creators Update" released today) although Window 10 in general has excellent polychromatic support. Chrome on Android 7.1 appears to be still missing polychromatic support and I've not had the opportunity to try Android 8.0.

The basic principles of chromatic proofreading are obvious. In the case of Egyptian Hieroglyphs, some signs are predominantly used as phonograms, others as ideograms. Some signs could be easily confused with others. Some hieroglyph forms exist but are rarely encountered in historical documents. And so forth. Use of colour to highlight certain of these characteristics can aid identification of patterns and possible transcription errors. I've found use of a chromatic font a more practical tool than using markup for chromatic highlighting for proofreading purposes.

I've used up to 18 colours in experiments with polychromatic proofreading of hieroglyphic. I've also experimented with context-specific colours in fonts and alternate colour palettes.  The key issue is usability and I've found some techniques that work well in specialist software can be over-complex when used in plain text editor software or work processors.

The simplest system I've found useful uses a font with four colours as follows:

1. Hieroglyphs predominantly encountered as phonograms remain black, as normal text.
2. Numeric hieroglyphs are displayed as red.
3. Ideograms commonly used as generic determinatives are displayed as green.
4. Other ideograms/determinatives are displayed as blue.

Even the novice will be aware that some hieroglyphs fulfil more than one role so its important that knowledge is applied when interpreting this simplified scheme.

An example of the technique applied to a Unicode-encoded text is available at Tale of the Eloquent Peasant encoded in UMdC. This example uses a webfont version of my experimental Aaron UMdC Phonetic Alpha font. An installable version of the font is available for download at Hieroglyphs Everywhere Fonts Project for anyone who'd like to try out the method. I've not got around to document how to use polychromatic fonts yet so less technical readers may want to wait until some tutorial information is available.

Bob Richmond

Hieroglyphic fonts for Unicode

I've compiled a list of Unicode hieroglyphic fonts at https://github.com/HieroglyphsEverywhere/Fonts/blob/master/HieroglyphicFontList.md. 'Official' download links are provided where applicable.

All these fonts contain the 1071 hieroglyphs introduced in Unicode 5.2 (2009). Certain fonts such as Aegyptus and Abydos contain hieroglyphs that are not yet in the Unicode standard.

My new Aaron Series fonts are intended to help establish new techniques for working with hieroglyphic in Unicode. They can also help with development of the next generation of Unicode hieroglyphic fonts that feature quadrat shaping.

If you know of other Unicode hieroglyph fonts to add to the list please let me know and I can update the list.

Bob Richmond

Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents about Egyptian Hieroglyphic (May 2017)

There are several updates and additions to the UTC document register concerning Ancient Egyptian since my previous post on the topic Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents about Egyptian Hieroglyphic (March 2017). Hieroglyphic was discussed during the UTC meeting (May 8-12, 2017) and some recommendations made: see L2/17-103 UTC #151 Minutes.

The place for questions, discussion and suggestions is the Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS mailing list (see Informatique et Égyptologie, Cambridge, 2016).

Recent documents

• L2/17-076 Revised proposal for the encoding of an Egyptological YOD and Ugaritic characters; Michel Suignard; 2017-05-09. This replaces the earlier L2/17-076 submitted in March as Proposal for the Encoding of an Egyptological YOD. The names of the YOD upper and lower case characters to be LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH SPIRITUS LENIS and LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH SPIRITUS LENIS. This appear to be generally accepted so we can be cautiously optimistic that a future version of Unicode will resolve this long-standing anomaly.
• L2/17-122R A method for encoding Egyptian quadrats in Unicode (revised); Andrew Glass, et al; 2017-05-16. Minor revision to clarify some technical points following UTC meeting. See my earlier post A method for encoding Egyptian quadrats in Unicode for an overview.
• L2/17/153 Recommendations to UTC #151 May 2017 on Script Proposals; Deborah Anderson; 2017-05-07. Summary of the Script ad hoc group discussion on hieroglyphic, recommending UTC discuss the L2/17-122 quadrat proposal.
• L2/17-171 Future Additions to ISO/IEC 10646 (May 2017); UTC/Deborah Anderson; 2-17-05-17. Additions requested include the Yod (as above) and six Hieroglyphic format control characters characters from L2/17-122 (4 corner and 2 bracket-like controls but not the overlay aka stack control at this time) in addition to the two format controls recommended in January 2016.

Current status of Ancient Egyptian for future Unicode

No decisions appear imminent on hieroglyph repertoire expansion in Unicode but Michel Suignard is making progress on his candidate database.

UTC is now recommending an 8 control character set for representing hieroglyph quadrats in Unicode and this will be running through the standardisation approval pipeline. All those interested in digital hieroglyphic will want to study what is proposed and the degree to which it meets their needs. The controls are:

13430 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH VERTICAL JOINER
13431 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL JOINER
13432 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH INSERT TOP START
13433 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH INSERT BOTTOM START
13434 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH INSERT TOP END
13435 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH INSERT BOTTOM END
13437 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH SEGMENT START
13438 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH SEGMENT END

UTC is recommending two new characters for the Egyptological YOD. Namely

A7BC LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH SPIRITUS LENIS
A7BD LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH SPIRITUS LENIS

There is a considerable amount of work needed to produce working implementations of the control system and guidelines for usage. There is a case for additional controls. I hope to deal with some of the issues in further blog posts an welcome any suggestions or feedback.

Bob Richmond

A method for encoding Egyptian quadrats in Unicode

A new document 'A method for encoding Egyptian quadrats in Unicode' is now available from the UTC document register as L2/17-122 [pdf]. The system described takes into account discussions last July during the Informatique et Égyptologie Cambridge meeting and afterwards about extensions to Unicode plain text support to handle vertical hieroglyphic and various complex forms of quadrat structure.

The place for questions, discussion and suggestions is the Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS mailing list (see Informatique et Égyptologie, Cambridge, 2016).

L2/17-122 contains a feasibility report based on three prototype OpenType font developments (Glass, Nederhof, and Richmond) which I hope goes a long way to alleviate concerns raised last year by Egyptologists about the viability of flexible hieroglyphic font implementations in Unicode.

L2/17-122 identifies 9 controls as follows:

Basic quadrat structures

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH VERTICAL JOINER
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL JOINER

These two controls were proposed in L2/16-018 (January 2016). They are similar to the original Manuel de Codage (MdC85) ':' and '*' controls.

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH SEGMENT START
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH SEGMENT END

These two controls operate in a similar way to MdC85 brackets '(' and ')'.

L2/17-122 does not contain structure extensions such as the group joiners suggested in L2/16-214 [pdf] to simplify encoding of quadrats in vertical text and tall quadrats in horizontal text. Therefore for most applications the basic quadrat structures of L2/17-122 are encoded as exact equivalents to those of MdC85 (itself derived from the Buurman 1976 model).

However, there are subtle differences from MdC85, most importantly (i) L2/17-122 has more clearly defined control behaviour and (ii) quadrat appearance is determined by a font (or equivalent) so there is more flexibility in handling issues such as hieroglyph sizing, kerning, etc. in plain text implementations.

Hieroglyph combinations

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH STACK MIDDLE

This control overlays one hieroglyph on top of another - a direct equivalent of the MdC88 '#' control (encoded as '##' in JSesh).

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH INSERT TOP START
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH INSERT BOTTOM START
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH INSERT TOP END
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH INSERT BOTTOM END

These four geometrical ligature controls are proposed in place of the L2/16-018 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH LIGATURE JOINER (which was based on an abstract ligature model for non-grid quadrat elements). This set of four ligature controls originates from a consensus formed at the I&E 2016 meeting that four 'corner control' ligatures are sufficient to meet anticipated plain text ligature needs of corpus projects such as Ramses and TLA and that the Egyptologists present preferred geometrical to abstract ligatures. This is a new approach to ligatures although they link fairly well to usage of the original MdC ''&''ligature and MdC extensions familiar to JSesh users.

Bob Richmond

Digital Encoding of Egyptian Hieroglyphic: Origins

Updated 2017-05-17.

I thought it might be useful to summarise some of the background to digital hieroglyphic to help  inform discussion about representations of hieroglyphic writing in Unicode.

This post deals with the early years. Information is thin on the ground so I'd be delighted to learn about any material, unpublished or unpublished, that survives from this formative period.

Apparently, use of computers for hieroglyphic goes back to the 1960s when computers and printing peripherals were hugely expensive and inaccessible to most people except a lucky few. However it was not until the early 1980s that the emergence of personal computer technology started to bring digital techniques and practical tools to Egyptologists and others.

The first Informatique et Égyptology 'round table' meeting (Paris, 26-28 June, 1984) was pivotal in shaping the first generation of digital hieroglyphic that has been used for the last 30 years. Fortunately, the proceedings of the meetings were published in 1985 (although unfortunately and ironically not yet available in digital format) and this post is mostly based on that publication. I'll summarise some papers from I&E 1984 relevant to encoding.

COMPUTER PRINTING OF HIEROGLYPHS AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD (T. G. H. James) describes the replacement of the traditional metal type system at Oxford University Press (used for typesetting the Gardiner font from 1927 to 1983) by a Monotype LaserComp photo type setter adapted for hieroglyphic. The final publication to use the original hot metal font was J.E.A. Vol. 69 (1983).

Typesetting instructions for OUP workflow

This paper gives an insight into older typesetting practices as well as the short-lived LaserComp technology soon to be superceded by desktop publishing on personal computers.

INFORMATIQUE APPLIQUEE A L'EGYPTOLOGIE (Dirk van der Plas) gives a snapshot of his experiences with the Buurman GLYPH program and the practical situation for those printing hieroglyph texts on a budget in 1984 including comparative costs of authography and typesetting.

A PROGRAMM SYSTEM FOR THE EDITION OF TEXT (especially hieroglyphic printing) (Norbert Stief) describes hieroglyph plotting software written in Fortran 77 running on an IBM 370 mainframe driving a CALCOMP plotter. The system was developed at University of Bonn and appears to be what is sometimes later known as the PLOTTEXT system. Mnemonics are used as alternatives to alphanumeric Gardiner codes for encoding purposes in a similar way to Buurman (1976). The 'Bonn Ziechenliste' font catalogue (an extension of the Egyptian Grammar sign list) is given here.

NEW HARDWARE--NEW SOFTWARE (Leonard H. Lesko) gives a short summary of hardware used in his latest setup at Brown University and his earlier hieroglyphic printing workflow at Berkeley during 1973-1982 using the SCRIBE program. The Berkeley system was notable for its use in creating A Dictionary of Late Egyptian 1982-), what I understand to be the first substantial hieroglyphic dictionary to use digital encoding and printing techniques. Not mentioned here is the use of quadrat structure patterns for SCRIBE (rather than a control scheme such as that used by Buurman). Just to prove there's nothing new under the sun, one of the systems I initially considered for Unicode encoding in early 2015 used a similar pattern system although at the time I was unaware of the Lesko work from 40 years ago.

PRINTING OF EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS BY MEANS OF A COMPUTER (Jan Buurman; Astronomer and hobby-Egyptologist). Buurman gives a history of his system which began as a hobby project in 1969. A sketch of the system was first published as The Composing of Hieroglyphic Texts by means of a Computer in Göttinger Miszellen 19 (1976). As far as I'm aware GM19 contains the earliest publication of what would become the basic MdC controls for quadrat structures.

Quadrat structure notation from " The Composing of Hieroglyphic Texts by means of a Computer" (1976)

GM19 reports that the first texts output (in 1971) took an average of 0.2 seconds per hieroglyph to process and 1.3 seconds to plot. The first version of GLYPH was written in Algol 60, running on a CDC Cyber 73 mainframe.

I understand that Buurman showed a video of the plotter in action to the meeting. Far more fun I expect than the laser printers we have grown used to. I'd love to see a video of  hieroglyphs being drawn by a plotter! I am grateful to Hans van den Berg for kindly providing two links showing output from a 1980s HP ColorPro plotter:  'wild bull hunt scarab' of Amenhotep III (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z9aCclxV0U) and part of the Tale of Sinhue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyp68emXMZM).

RESOLUTION. The meeting resolved to create a standard system for encoding hieroglyphs to be made available before the Fourth International Congress of Egyptology in August 1985. A committee chosen to work on the manual consisted of Jan Buurman, Nicolas Grimal, Michael Hainsworth, Norbert Stief, Robert Vergnieux and Dirk van der Plas.

Proceedings of Informatique et Egyptology 1984 (Paris, 1995). Page 225.

This proposed system was to become known as Manuel de Codage (MdC85) which I aim to summarise in a subsequent post.

Bob Richmond

Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents about Egyptian Hieroglyphic (March 2017)

Updated 2017-04-04.

My January post Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents on Egyptian Hieroglyphic 2016 summarised relevant submissions to the UTC Document register last year. Additions so far for 2017 are:

January to March 2017

• L2/16-210r  A system of control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text (updated version); Mark-Jan Nederhof and others; 2017-01-21. Warning of possible confusion. Despite the L2/16-210r document code this January update is substantially changed from the L2/16-210 document and not a minor revision (the earlier document contains alternative ideas and additional material). The original L2/16-210 dated 2016-07-25 is still available as http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16210-egyptian-control.pdf ).
• L2/17-073 New draft for the encoding of an extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire (Hieroglyphica based); Michel Suignard; 2017-03-19. An associated spreadsheet http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17073-n4788-hieroglyphs.xlsx is also available for download. A database snapshot is also available at http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17073-n4788-database-add.pdf. This draft contains substantial changes from its predecessor.
• L2/17-076. Proposal for the encoding of an Egyptological YOD. Michel Suignard; 2017-03-24. A new attempt to sort out the remaining transliteration character.

If I've missed any other published documents relating to hieroglyphic in Unicode or any points came up at the UTC 150 meeting in January please let me know.

The next UTC meetings are in early May.

Bob Richmond

Irregular Hieroglyph clusters

I am compiling a document on irregular Egyptian Hieroglyph clusters (aka quadrats) and would like to hear of any publications relating to this topic. Documenting what is required is an essential precursor to expanding the capability of Unicode plain text orthography beyond regular cluster support.

Examples in this blog post are all taken from the 18th Dynasty Tomb of Rekhmire (TT100).

Here are some examples of the regular clusters that account for the vast majority of writing from ancient sources:

In addition to these simple grid-like arrangements, there are various conventional forms of cluster such as:

The majority of these conventional clusters follow the bird and cobra patterns of non-grid arrangement.

Irregular clusters can be seen when the scribe/artist attempts to squeeze more hieroglyphs into the available space, avoid empty space, or achieve some special visual effect.

In many cases in Unicode text it is satisfactory to transcribe irregular clusters into an equivalent more regular form as has often been done in established practice. For instance the first irregular form in the illustration could be written in traditional MdC as (a:t)*H-A28 with no great significance for transcription purposes. Likewise the last example can use t:t:W10 ignoring the slope.

The goal of future developments of the Unicode writing system is to enable rendering of clusters inherent to the writing system. This principle can only be made precise on the basis of well-attested data about irregular clusters in order to be crystal clear what is to be accomplished, Not all arrangements of hieroglyphs discovered in ancient writings are inherent and count as plain text. Through detailed illustration it should be possible to reach a consensus among Egyptologists that an extended Unicode system meets the needs of the subject.

In the near future I hope to produce draft documentation for comment. Meanwhile I'm interested in hearing of any relevant work that has been done already on hieroglyphic orthography and any examples of irregular quadrats that may be relevant.

Thanks
Bob Richmond

JSesh sign placement

A technical note by Serge Rosmorduc About JSesh 6 sign placement is now available on the JSesh website via jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/en/node/3112. The document sketches some aspects of how JSesh organises hieroglyphs into clusters/quadrats for rendering. Some JSesh users may find this informative.

The note does not discuss when to use special features for sign placement so I'll give some practical guidance here.

In common with other first generation hieroglyphic editing software, the primary purpose of JSesh is to generate images of hieroglyphic text, typically for inclusion in word processing documents as illustrations. The JSesh sign placement extensions over basic MdC (Manuel de Codage) focus on this application. It is possible to get away with an inelegant or incorrect transcription so long as the image looks ok although hacking solutions can prove to be fools gold so avoid where at all possible.

A secondary, and increasingly useful, application is to use JSesh to encode hieroglyphic data in an MdC (Manuel de Codage) style format intended for processing in other software applications such as databases and other MdC-like editors. Here, elements of JSesh sign placement may be unsupported, irrelevant, or misleading. Incorrect or inefficient transcriptions are unacceptable.

This means the golden rule is to keep a JSesh encoding as simple as possible and only use the more complex features when essential.

For instance ntt is normally written MdC n:t*t. However technically it could be written in JSesh as n:(t*t) or n{{0,10,110}}**t{{0,800,98}}**t{{600,800,99}} even though these alternative forms make no apparent sense and should be avoided.

In order of complexity (least first) you should try to transcribe a quadrat using:

1. Regular '*' and ':' operators (preferred option).
2. Ligature system (if regular quadrat doesn't work)
3. Absolute positioning (only if all else fails, e.g. ligature doesn't work).

In some cases you may find a need for brackets. This is ok but keep usage to the minimum of what is essential.

When it seems absolute positioning is essential for a JSesh transcription, you may want to consider inserting MdC comments at the the top of the JSesh data file. For instance:

++JSESH6: anx\R30{{0,357,51}}**G5{{194,0,97}} is used because anx\R30^^^G5 renders the ankh too small.+s
++JSESH6: R7{{0,612,55}}**bA{{101,0,98}}**Z1{{953,69,79}} is used because R7^^^bA&&&Z1 default scaling of R7 is unsatisfactory (although R7\50^^^bA&&&Z1 is not bad). Note in some MdC systems R7&bA&Z1 looks fine.+s

I personally use this commenting approach with JSesh data so I know what to do if improvements appear in a later release of JSesh or I want to create generic MdC or Unicode data.

One pernicious use of absolute positioning I've observed is 'new signs from old'. For instance combine A50 ('noble') with S45 ('flagellum') instead of using the preformed A51 sign. Always use a preformed sign when available in the Hieroglyphica/JSesh set.

The current MdC analysis for Unicode Repertoire Extensions web app is not designed to process absolute positioning but provides an easy way to highlight absolutes and ligatures used in MdC-coded data. I find it useful to help spot JSesh transcription errors.

A related topic is conversion between Unicode and JSesh data. The most important consideration related to this process is that new Unicode fonts define sign placement in the font itself  (allowing the user to work in many generic applications from Word Processors to Web Browsers). Each font can take its own approach to sign placement. A topic I hope to return to fairly soon.

Bob Richmond

150 Years of Hieroglyphic in Type: Anniversary of the first typeset Egyptian dictionary

2017 marks the 150th anniversary of the first printing of a typeset dictionary and grammar of Egyptian Hieroglyphic, written by Samuel Birch (at the time employed by the British Museum as head of the Egyptian and Assyrian Department).

The dictionary and grammar took the form of several hundred pages of extensive additions by Birch to Volume V of the (1867) English translation Egypt's place in Universal History of Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte (1845-) by C. C. J. Baron Bunsen. Birch and Bunson collaborated ten years earlier on additions to the English edition of Volume I (translated by Charles Cotterel; Longmans, 1848) notably concerning the writing system (including Appendix II - a hieroglyphic sign list).

About the typesetting process, Birch writes in his preface to Volume V:

The hieroglyphic used in this volume has been cast by Mr. Branston from designs drawn by Mr. Joseph Bonomi. It is the sole hieroglyphical fount in this country, and its importance can only be sufficiently appreciated from the consideration that Messrs. Longman have fulfilled, at a heavy cost, a task only undertaken abroad by foreign governments.

The advantage of this type to the present volume cannot be too highly appreciated, as it has rendered it practicable to print the Egyptian Dictionary, the Grammar, and the Chrestomathy in a form which renders the study of the hieroglyphs accessible both to the student and general enquirer. The Dictionary is the only one hitherto printed in this country, nor has any hieroglyphical dictionary appeared elsewhere, except that of Champollion, published in 1841, which contained only a few of the principal words.  Its phonetic arrangement will, it is hoped, render it particularly easy of consultation. It has been a great labour to compile and print it, and the execution of it has been a task of many years.

A feature of the Bonomi typeface is the use of mostly solid filled in hieroglyphs. There is no attempt to detail most signs as is popular practice for the majority of hieroglyphic fonts later and nowadays.

Hieroglyphic typesetting was new technology in the mid-Nineteenth century and many later publications followed, using a variety of fonts, The Lepsius/Theinhardt font is probably the best known from that era.

Modern digital hieroglyphic, both the first generation MdC approach and the new Unicode/Opentype based systems, have characteristics that can be traced back though the early works by Birch and Lepsius. The corpus of 150 years of hieroglyphic content in type has proved very useful in devising new techniques and designing new fonts.

Some developments don't happen overnight. The goal to make hieroglyphic available to the student and general enquirer expressed by Birch has advanced gradually over 150 years with many modern publications available fairly inexpensively in print. Yet in terms of the potential of modern technology, there is much more to be done.

Sadly, the Birch publication never made it to the best seller lists of the day.

E. A. Budge dedicated his Dictionary of Hieroglyphs (1920) to the memory of Samuel Birch (whose Ancient Egyptian courses he attended and later worked with for a couple of years at the British Museum). In the introduction to his dictionary, Budge writes:

... it is quite impossible to hide the fact that the inclusion of Birch's Egyptian Dictionary in the fifth volume of the English translation was a great misfortune for the Dictionary itself and for the beginner in Egyptology for whom the work was primarily intended. There was an interval of seven years between the publication of the fourth and fifth volumes of the English translation of Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, arid there seems to be no doubt that public interest in Bunsen's scheme of chronology drooped when its author died in 1860, the year which saw the appearance of the fourth volume, and was practically dead when the fifth volume was published in 1867. According to Birch, the volume fell " flat," and its editor and publishers were greatly disappointed. Whether the edition was a small one or not I have no evidence to show, but it was certainly the fact that for some reason or other copies of the volume were difficult to get in the early "seventies." It was said at the time that the publishers, being dissatisfied with the sales, had "disposed" of the sheets of a large number of copies The natural result was that when people found out that the volume contained Birch's Dictionary and Grammar and Chrestomathy the copies that found their way into the market fetched relatively very high prices, or at all events prices which effectively placed the book beyond the reach of the ordinary student. When I attended Birch's Egyptian classes in 1875-76 and needed the book urgently, I was obliged to trace each page of it on a separate sheet of tracing paper, omitting the references, and when these sheets were bound I used them for some years with great benefit. Moreover, the volume of  the English translation of Bunsen's work formed a veritable tomb for Birch's Dictionary. The title-page of it sets forth quite clearly that the "Historical Investigation" was by Bunsen, and that it was translated from the German by Charles H. Cottrell, Esq., M.A., and that it contains "Additions by Samuel Birch, LL.D." But who could possibly imagine from this last remark that Birch's contribution was 594 pages, i.e., nearly three-quarters of the whole volume, or that his contribution included an Egyptian Dictionary, the first ever published arranged on phonetic principles (!), and containing about 4,500 entries of Egyptian words, and names of gods and places, with references and translations, and an Egyptian Grammar and Chrestomathy? Or, again, take the case of the student who wants to consult these works and who, hearing that copies of them are to be seen in the British Museum Library, goes to the Reading Room to see them. He turns up the entry Birch, Samuel, LL.D., of the British Museum, in the Great Catalogue, but fails to find any mention of the Dictionary of Hieroglyphics or Grammar and Chrestomathy, because they are not mentioned in any one of the columns of names of the other books and papers which Birch wrote. All that he will find connecting Birch with an Egyptian Dictionary is the entry, " Sketch of a Hieroglyphical Dictionary, London, 1838," and unless he receives further instruction he will conclude that the " Sketch" published in 1838 is useless to him, and that Birch's Egyptian Dictionary never appeared.

An account from which several lessons can be learned.


Bob Richmond

Establishing the next Expansion of the Egyptian Hieroglyph Repertoire in Unicode

As I noted in my previous post, 2016 saw progress in identifying methodologies along with lists of candidate hieroglyphs for inclusion in an expansion to the 1071 already available in Unicode since 2009, I expect a formal proposal for an initial expansion set to emerge this year, probably for release in the Unicode 11 (2018) or Unicode 12 (2019) timescale.

Note: announcements and discussions on Ancient Egyptian and Unicode now take place on the "Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS" mailing list (see blog post Informatique et Égyptologie - Cambridge - 2016 for link and comments).

Also, it is now possible to check your Manuel de Codage (MdC) documents (from JSesh etc.) online for hieroglyphs currently missing in Unicode. See my October post MdC analysis for Unicode Repertoire Extensions. I hope to keep this up to date during the next few months as Unicode proposals firm up.

Finally. There is much potential for hieroglyphic already in Unicode now the script has become better supported in recent years by advance in font technology, web browsers, word processors and so on. I hope to see substantial progress this year. As far as the repertoire is concerned I personally use a systematic way of working with hieroglyphs not yet in Unicode and hope to publish details and resources about this system when I'm comfortable it works well alongside expected developments of the formal standard though 2019. Meanwhile I'd be pleased to hear from others working with expanded repertoire in Unicode so we don't duplicate work. Thanks.

Bob Richmond

Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents on Egyptian Hieroglyphic 2016

I thought it would be useful to compile a list of documents relating to Ancient Egyptian in the 2016 Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) document registry. I've added a few notes for explanation.

UTC meets every three months so I've included minutes of the meetings where Egyptian has been on the agenda. Only one formal proposal was made during the year but there were various drafts, discussion documents and comments about the hieroglyphic writing system and the hieroglyph repertoire.

Following the I&E Cambridge 2016 meeting in July, it was agreed that discussions on Ancient Egyptian and Unicode would take place on the "Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS" mailing list (see blog post Informatique et Égyptologie - Cambridge - 2016). If you are interested in following progress or feel you have something to contribute to digital hieroglyphic developments at any level I recommend you join the mailing list.

I also hope to continue to track developments on this blog as the pieces of the puzzle come together this year.


January to March

• L2/16-018 Proposal to encode three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs (revised); Bob Richmond, Andrew Glass; 2016-01-27
• L2/16-028 Preliminary draft of the extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire; Michel Suignard; 2016-01-21
• L2/16-037 Recommendations to UTC #146 January 2016 on Script Proposals; Deborah Anderson, et al; 2016-01-24
• L2/16-004 UTC #146 Minutes; Lisa Moore; 2016-02-01

Summary. The L2/16-018 proposal was a clarification of L2/15-123 "Proposal to encode three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs (revised); Bob Richmond; 2015-05-04" addressing all feedback received to date. This proposal was put out to ballot as a UTC recommendation from meeting #146.

April to June

• L2/16-079 Preliminary draft for the encoding of an extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire; Michel Suignard; 2016-04-20
• L2/16-090 Comments on three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs; Mark-Jan Nederhof, Vinodh Rajan with additional comments by Richter et al (TLA project) and a note by Polis and Rosmorduc (Ramses Project). 2016-04-25.
• L2/16-104 Observations: L2/16-090 [Egyptian]; Bob Richmond; 2016-05-02
• L2/16-121 UTC #147 Minutes; Lisa Moore; 2016-05-20

Summary. Glass, Nederhof, Richmond participated by phone in UTC discussion on Egyptian repertoire and controls at UTC #147. Detailed discussion continued at I&E Cambridge 2016 in July.

July to September

• L2/16-177 A comprehensive system of control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text (preliminary version); Mark-Jan Nederhof; 2016-06-30
• L2/16-199 A suggestion ... for Ancient Egyptian; William Overington; 2016-07-21
• L2/16-210 A system of control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text; Mark-Jan Nederhof, et al; 2016-07-25
• L2/16-204 Recently Closed Action Items (since 2016-05-05); Rick McGowan; 2016-07-25
• L2/16-214 An Extension to the three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs and some additional remarks; Bob Richmond; 2016-08-01
• L2/16-216 Recommendations to UTC #148 August 2016 on Script Proposals; Deborah Anderson, et al; 2016-08-01
• L2/16-218 Brief Report from Cambridge meeting of Egyptologists and Update; Deborah Anderson; 2016-08-01
• L2/16-227 The Universal Hieroglyphic Writing System: Consensus and possible compromise; Bob Richmond; 2016-08-04
• L2/16-231 Proposal for Ancient Egyptian encoding in Unicode; Serge Rosmorduc, et al; 2016-08-04
• L2/16-233 Addendum to: A system of control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text; Mark-Jan Nederhof, et al; 2016-08-05
• L2/16-203 UTC #148 Minutes; Lisa Moore; 2016-08-18
• L2/16-250 Preliminary proposal to encode Möller's Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the SMP (WG2 N4741); Michael Everson; 2016-09-14
• L2/16-251 Preliminary Mapping table of Möller's Egyptian Hieroglyphs (WG2 N4742 ; see also associated spreadsheet); Deborah Anderson; 2016-09-12
• L2/16-257 Source analysis of an extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire (Hieroglyphica); Michel Suignard; 2016-09-20

Summary. Discussions at I&E Cambridge 2016 through to UTC#148 yielded various suggestions for extending the L2/16-018 Proposal, notably considering rare quadrat structures and extending scope to address vertical writing issues along with associated tall quadrat orthography in horizontal writing. At UTC#148 there was consensus on use of the EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL JOINER and EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH VERTICAL JOINER proposed controls but that the EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH LIGATURE JOINER should be suspended in favour of investigating more elaborate  schemes. Monograms and other more complex arrangements not well-suited to controls to be treated as part of hieroglyph repertoire development.

October to December

• L2/16-298 Draft additional repertoire for ISO/IEC 10646:2016 (5th ed.) Amendment 1.2 (WG2 N4770); Michel Suignard; 2016-10-27
• L2/16-307 Towards an Expansion of the Unicode Hieroglyph repertoire; Bob Richmond; 2016-10-28
• L2/16-326 Recently Closed Action Items (since 2016-07-25); Rick McGowan; 2016-11-06
• L2/16-342 Recommendations to UTC #149 November 2016 on Script Proposals; Deborah Anderson, et al 2016-11-07.
• L2/16-325 UTC #149 Minutes; Lisa Moore; 2016-11-18

Summary. L2/16-298 draft allocates a block 13430-1343F Egyptian Hieroglyphs Format Controls with two characters defined: U+13430 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL JOINER and U+13431 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH VERTICAL JOINER and as things stand these are to be part of the repertoire of Unicode 10.0 (Summer 2017). Other repertoire and writing system issues are still being investigated and I expect activity to continue at 2016 levels during this year.

Bob Richmond

Hieroglyphs on the web: SINUHE the Hierotyper

The SINUHE the Hierotyper project is about keyboard input and display/edit of Unicode hieroglyphic inside 'Office' and web applications. SINUHE combines an ingenious adaptation of Japanese input methods for typing hieroglyphic by So Miyagawa with a font implementing a version of Simplified Egyptian by Marwan Kilani.

The project website is here and project sources with some documentation on GitHub at https://github.com/somiyagawa/SINUHE-the-Hierotyper. It is well worth taking a look at their videos on YouTube such as such as SINUHE the Hierotyper: demo 1. SINUHE is an ongoing work in progress and you need to feel comfortable with downloading the files and getting elements to work if you want to try it yourself. If you have a medium-large amount of hieroglyphic to type, SINUHE is faster than traditional use of codes and sign palettes so worth considering.

Longer term it is likely that standard Egyptian Hieroglyphic input methods will become available in their own right so this Japanese scenario for direct typing into standard word processing documents and the like will no longer be necessary. However, I can't see this happening earlier than a couple of years from now after Unicode 11 is released.

Meanwhile, SINUHE gives a preview of the kind of thing to expect for input as we move beyond the first generation of digital hieroglyphic and the typical input methods and workflow of traditional MdC applications. Of course you will be able to continue using hieroglyphic editors including traditional MdC-based systems to transcribe hieroglyphic then convert to and from Unicode if you prefer.

The notion of Simplified Egyptian Hieroglyphic fonts has been around for quite some time but as far as I know this is the first system using the technique to be made generally available on the web. The neat part about Simplified Hieroglyphic is it can be used in much modern software. However a major problem with this approach to fonts is one font may render the quadrat structure of hieroglyphic text differently to another font unless there is an agreed standard to which fonts conform to. I therefore recommend that anyone thinking of making simplified fonts should work alongside the SINUHE project to maintain a common approach to hieroglyph sequence mapping.

I'm planning to support SINUHE text format conversion to and from the control character approach of the Unicode Standard for Hieroglyphic used in the Hieroglyphs Everywhere Project (HEP). The great thing about open standards is all software writers have the information to enable them to do the same thing if they wish.

Thanks So and Marwen for interesting discussions and your demos of the system in action.

Bob Richmond

Web browser test for hieroglyphic (December 2016)

I've released a Hieroglyphs Everywhere Project (HEP) web browser test page for Unicode hieroglyphic to provide a simple test you can use to check at a glance the status of the web browser(s) you are using on PCs or other devices.

HEP uses web fonts so there's no need to install a hieroglyphic font on a PC or other device. HEP resources work within the scope of Unicode (2009) hieroglyphic to preview features relating to the new hieroglyphic writing system (currently expected in Unicode 11, 2018).

I'm making the test page available ahead of time so we can become aware of any unexpected issues.

Up to date versions of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge/Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox work well as a general rule. Keeping your web browser up to date is highly recommended, irrespective of hieroglyphic, for security and performance reasons.

I've found Firefox works consistently over a wide range of devices (including Android, Linux, macOS and Windows systems) aside from some minor visual variations.

Chrome varies from system to system: for instance polychromatic is missing from Windows 7 and (surprisingly) Android at this time. On Windows 10 a Chrome bug displays bold polychromatic text in black and white.

Safari still renders polychromatic text as monochrome on macOS and iOS. Presumably this will be fixed sometime in 2017. Meanwhile Firefox is available to Mac users for greater web standards compliance including polychromatic text.

Internet Explorer, like Chrome, is limited in capabilities by its host system for example IE on Windows 7 lacks modern font technology. If you are forced to use a legacy Windows 7 system I'd recommend you switch web browser from IE if you haven't already. I have a HEP work-around for some IE/Windows 7 issues but would rather spend the time needed on something useful unless this turn out to be a major problem.

During 2017, I expect to update and extend the test page from time to time. Several reasons for this can be anticipated.

1. Progress with the Unicode Standard for the Egyptian Hieroglyphic writing system and repertoire extensions.
2. Identification of browser bugs, e.g. in OpenType font rendering.
3. Additional browser features or browser bug avoidance techniques used by the Hieroglyphs Everywhere Project.

Bob Richmond

Several Observations concerning Polychromatic Egyptian Hieroglyphic fonts

The Egyptian Hieroglyphic writing system is inherently polychromatic. The colour or colours used for individual hieroglyphs involve naturalistic, symbolic and conventional characteristics adapted to the materials or pigments available to the artist/scribe. For the most part, hieroglyphs were coloured consistently in a single painting or inscription. Conventions were used, for instance green is associated with growing plants and life, blue the sky and primeval flood. These characteristics of hieroglyphic makes it possible to envisage coherent polychromatic fonts with useful applications.

Symbol & Magic in Egyptian Art (R. H. Wilkinson, 1994), Chapter 5, provides a good introduction to Egyptian use of colour.

Hieroglyphic will be the first intrinsically chromatic Unicode writing system. It is important, however, to be clear that Unicode itself and its hieroglyphic content do not define chromatic features. This is done by systems built on Unicode such as CSS/HTML web standards, typically using the OpenType font standard for text rendering. Modern versions of web browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge/Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox already implement font technology to work with basic polychromatic, mainly thanks to the popularity of colour emoji.

Once hieroglyphic writing system additions are available in the Unicode standard there can be little doubt that polychromatic will dominate casual use of hieroglyphic. Hundreds of millions of children around the world encounter Egyptian each year as part of their education and colour makes hieroglyphic more comprehensible and interesting. This situation will benefit Egyptology since it will encourage digital industries to support Unicode hieroglyphic in their products. There are questions such as how far to scope casual hieroglyphic but the earliest this widespread deployment could begin is Summer 2018 so there is ample time to experiment with options and discuss details before a universal font rollout.

The situation with polychromatic for scholarly applications is different. Monochrome hieroglyphic has 150 years of publications to inform on strengths and weaknesses of transcriptions but there is no tradition of polychromatic typefaces at all. There are obvious benefits of colour such as hieroglyphs which look similar in monochrome yet have distinctive colour in paintings. Birds G001 ꜣ 𓄿 and G004 tyw 𓅂 are good examples. Nevertheless in the short term I expect most Egyptological work to continue to focus on monochrome. This principle also applies to implementation of Unicode hieroglyphic fonts and the methods, resources and tools for working with the next generation of hieroglyphic technology where there's a lot still to do. Incidentally, hieratic transcriptions that follow traditional use of red and black ink in hieratic do not need polychromatic fonts. Nevertheless if you are producing a book, thesis, museum website or the like aimed at the 2018/19 time-frame it is not too early to consider whether or how polychromatic hieroglyphic might be used to advantage.

My own work on polychromatic began with the simple question: is it technically feasible at the current state of technology? For a long time the answer has been no. As recently as January, when the Unicode hieroglyphic writing system was expected in 2017, polychromatic seemed best left to the second stage of development when technology was slightly further ahead. However, one positive result of the delay to 2018 is it now proves possible to bring polychromatic forward by a year for use by specialists (as noted above widespread deployment should wait on the standards process).

Hieroglyphic fonts are fairly complex to develop. Polychromatic adds more technical complexity. To simplify the first font I decided to focus on two aspects. 1. Use in a dictionary application and 2. software user interface (UI). This reduces quadrat layout and chromatic complexity, for instance I could ignore vertical writing and the tall or complex quadrats needed in some transcription scenarios. This is still a work in progress but I hope write more on the topic during 2017.

Bob Richmond

Egyptian numbers and MdC transcription of Hieroglyphic

A useful feature of most implementations of Manual de Codage (MdC) notation is distinct codes for numbers. There are five codes named 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 used in the same way as hieroglyph alphanumeric codes or mnemonics as quadrat building blocks. This is especially useful when dealing with units 1 to 9 where it is often useful to distinguish between the concept of unity (Z1) and the number 1, duality (Z4/Z4A) and the number 2, plurality (Z2) and the number 3.

The situation with numbers, plurality and so forth is more nuanced than this summary suggests. Ancient scribes did not think in these terms. Conventions changed over time. Hieratic featured ligated forms. Specialist representations of numbers were used for fractions and other applications. My point here is about basic practical use of MdC not this wider picture.

There are two important reasons to make the numeric distinction.

1. Fonts. Most fonts used for MdC implementations to date do not display '1' differently to Z1. This will change with a new generation of improved fonts. See Egyptian Grammar (Gardiner, 1957) p191-p206 for examples showing how the original Gardiner font makes a distinction between Z1 and some numeric forms.

2. Search and analysis. Such applications using MdC are rare so far but the next generation of software will add these features. For instance searching transcriptions for dates is very useful and it is likely such software will be strict about use of number forms to avoid confusion.

Many examples of the practice of treating Z1 and numbers as if they are the same cropped up in the analysis referenced in my earlier post Analysis of Unicode Egyptian hieroglyphs in a collection of MdC-coded transcriptions. Part of the explanation of this is the fact that some of the transcriptions originated with early MdC editing software that did not support the numeric feature.

Examples of number codes used incorrectly are A1*B1:Z2 (people, plurality) incorrectly transcribed as A1*B1:3; G1&Z1 (ideogram) incorrectly transcribed as G1&1; Z1*Z1*Z1:Z1*Z1 (3:2) incorrectly transcribed as Z1*Z1*1:Z1*Z1.

It is not an MdC error to use the Z1 form. The verbose Z1*Z1*Z1:Z1*Z1 transcription, for instance, is a legitimate alternative to 3:2 in most current MdC implementations although it may render differently and in a less satisfactory way in some of these MdC implementations. Sometimes verbose is unavoidable such as using the current release of WikiHiero that does not recognise numeric codes. However it can be expected that future releases of MdC software may give a warning when verbose sequences are encountered. I'm taking this approach with data and software in the Hieroglyphs Everywhere Project (HEP) to avoid confusion when linking traditional MdC with Unicode-based solutions. In short, as a general rule use numeric representations for units in MdC where feasible.

MdC provides other numeric codes 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 used in a similar way to the units. I would like to recommend these but there is a bug in JSesh 5.5 that results in less satisfactory rendering of quadrats using these numeric forms.  -20:10- is a less satisfactory rendering compared with  -V20*V20:V20-. Fortunately, unlike the ambiguous situation with strokes, the linkage with Unicode is less problematic so for the time being its mostly harmless to use verbose notation.

The narrow Z2 issue

One problem encountered with MdC transcriptions is the fact that Hieroglyphica (1993 and 2000 versions) omitted defining a code for the narrow variant of Z2. The narrow variant is a feature of the Gardiner font and commonplace in Egyptian Grammar but not explicitly given a code in the sign list. This narrow variant is known as Z002A in Unicode and Z2D in Hieroglyphica extensions such as the Aegyptus font. Z2D was used in InScribe (2004) and documented in EGPZ version 1 (2006).

Unfortunately, the Z2D omission from Hieroglyphica means transcriptions that need the narrow variant often resort to using the number 3 as a substitute when using editing software such as JSesh 5.5. This unsatisfactory situation needs to be resolved.

Personally, when working with JSesh material I write 3\NaN (meaning not a number) - a legitimate JSesh construction. So rather than write -D21:X1*3- (as in Egyptian Grammar Exercise XVIII) I use -D21:X1*3\NaN-.

I'm not especially advocating my approach at present just drawing attention to the problem as something you will need to fix in your transcriptions in the future.

If you are developing MdC-related software such as WikiHiero it is safe and easy to add Z2D support.

Conclusions

In principle MdC support for numbers is fairly effective but has problems in some implementations. To understand this fully needs a more detailed analysis than can be adequately treated in a blog post.

I hope that by raising these points MdC users will give more thought to representation of numbers when transcribing new material or updating existing transcriptions.

To end on a positive note, the situation with Unicode-based solutions is better defined and potentially easier to use.

Bob Richmond

Software Developer Guidance on supporting Egyptian Hieroglyphic in Unicode: Introduction

This is the first in what I hope to be a series of technical posts aimed at software developers interested in supporting the Egyptian Hieroglyphic writing system in their systems or applications.

Most Egyptologists and others interested in Hieroglyphic need not be aware of these technical details and can skip the topic.

Unicode has contained 1071 hieroglyph characters since 2009. Additional features to enable an actual writing system in Unicode was planned for Unicode 10 (2017) but these are on hold until some requests for specialist additions are clarified meaning the release is delayed to Unicode 11 (2018) or possibly Unicode 12 (2019). These possible additions affect detailed font implementations but do not change what needs to done to make an application capable of displaying Hieroglyphic when it becomes available.

I'm working on resources for 2017 to enable useful work to be done and software to be tested so a working software ecosystem already exists whenever the standard is formally released.

Two innovative aspects of hieroglyphic writing may be especially interesting to software developers.

1. Hieroglyphs are typically arranged in clusters

This is different to most writing systems where characters follow one after another. This feature means that hieroglyphic fonts are probably the most complex examples of OpenType and can potentially reveal bugs or deficiencies in the font processing software used by applications.

The web-browser situation is in pretty good shape. If you are developing web-apps for modern browsers there is probably little to be concerned about. Conversely one well-known development environment with only limited support for OpenType is Microsofts .Net-based Universal Windows Programs (UWP) system which at time of writing does not render complex fonts.

2. Hieroglyphic is the first polychromatic writing system in Unicode

Polychromatic fonts are mostly used for Emoji characters at present predominantly via up to date OpenType font support. They are supported in the latest versions of popular web browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge/Internet Explorer. However even simple color Emoji are still missing from many other applications.

Polychromatic hieroglyphic fonts are capable of rendering in monochrome so support is optional in your application. However casual users of hieroglyphs will likely be engaged by color and the feature also has value for scholarly work. Polychromatic fonts may gain popularity for other purposes so support is something you might like add to your application road-map.

Many application developers will need access to suitable APIs to add polychromatic support to their application. Therefore at this stage I'm especially interested in hearing from developers of high profile applications and popular API libraries and can be contacted via http://www.hieroglyphseverywhere.net/Home/Contact.

Bob Richmond

Analysis of Unicode Egyptian hieroglyphs in a collection of MdC-coded transcriptions

This is a follow-up to my post last week MdC analysis for Unicode Repertoire Extensions.

I've applied the web app to a collection of 180 MdC files and summarised the results in Analysis of Unicode Egyptian hieroglyphs in a collection of MdC-coded transcriptions [PDF].

There is also a minor update to the MdC analysis for Repertoire Extensions web app itself fixing a couple of bugs and increasing the number of repertoire candidates to 200.

Bob Richmond

MdC analysis for Unicode Repertoire Extensions

As part of discussions on expanding the hieroglyph repertoire in Unicode it is useful to be able to inspect existing digital documents in Manuel de Codage (MdC) format. I've therefore made a web app available for this purpose: MdC analysis for Repertoire Extensions.

Most users of MdC will probably find the app instructive, whether interested in Unicode developments or not.

MdC methods of encoding Egyptian hieroglyphs have been around for over 25 years. MdC has proved by far the most popular method of digitally encoding hieroglyphic for publishing and database-type applications.

One complication is the fact that MdC was never technically defined in detail and work on the system appears to have stopped after the publication of the second edition of Hieroglyphica (2000) and before documentation was made available online. Therefore, several interpretations, extensions, variations and subsets of MdC are in existence (e.g. WinHiero, JSesh 5.5, WinGlyph and InScribe 2004). The web app attempts to be fairly permissive on what variation of MdC is analysed.

There is something of the chicken and the egg about releasing an app before there is a clear vision of the first expansion of the Unicode hieroglyph set. Bear that in mind.

I hope to evolve and improve the app over the next few months so feel free to send feedback via www.egpz.org.

Bob Richmond

Unicode plain text proposal status (October 2016)

Summary

Plain text hieroglyphic writing in Unicode is currently on hold while some technical points are investigated. These are use of EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH LIGATURE JOINER, extensions for rare forms of writing and extensions for vertical text (the initial proposal was focused on the forms of horizontal writing that account for the vast majority of hieroglyphic in print and first generation digital formats).

This means the earliest that hieroglyphic writing will be released as part of the Unicode Standard is Unicode 11 (2018), a year after previously planned for Unicode 10. This delay unfortunately means it won't coincide with the 150th anniversary of the first print publication using a hieroglyphic typeface (mentioned in Some remarks about Unicode Hieroglyphic fonts).

This is a nuisance but in practical terms there is no reason to hold up work on building an ecosystem for Unicode hieroglyphic writing. It simply means it will be necessary to use an approach such as the web font referenced in Unicode Hieroglyphs in web browsers: Web Fonts as the basis of fonts and tools, accepting some limitations in what can be done until the Unicode standard is updated and implemented by web browsers, system software, and applications such as word processors.

Discussions

This Summer featured much discussion of the Proposal to encode three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs (L2/16-018R) at the Informatique et Égyptologie - Cambridge - 2016 meeting in July. And afterwards. In early August, several of us from the I&E meeting participated in a telephone discussion with members of the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC).

There were also discussions about expanding the repertoire of Unicode hieroglyphs. In practical terms, this is the main obstacle to fully encoding a range of ancient sources one might expect to be represented in a plain text writing system. Repertoire is not entirely unconnected with control characters but the two can proceed separately in the standardisation process so I'll treat this topic another time.

The purpose of the proposed three control characters is to enable Hieroglyphic writing in Unicode (the current situation is 1071 basic hieroglyph characters were incorporated in the standard in 2009 but there is no way to form quadrats so there is no authentic writing system as such). Most participants were in agreement with the principle of enabling the writing system. However, the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA) and Ramses corpsus projects have objected to moving forward with the three until additional features are provided.

The reason these extensions were not proposed for the first release was to focus on the vast majority of modern hieroglyphic in typeset books and digital formats which use horizontal writing and do not need additions to enable digital encoding.

Interest was expressed in extending the scope of  L2/16-018R to deal with vertical writing and the related 'tall quadrat' orthography (used in some horizontal writings). Some are of the opinion it is important this is done for the first release of support for the writing system rather than as a second stage. I've described two extended control characters, EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL GROUP JOINER and EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL GROUP JOINER I've been using for vertical text evaluation in a discussion document An Extension to the three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs and some additional remarks (L2/16-214).

Examples of several instances of rare quadrat arrangements were noted that cannot be represented elegantly or unambiguously using L2/16-018R. Analysis so far suggests these account for order 0.01% (sic) of the digitised corpus but may be more common in certain ancient contexts.

Additional controls can be added to deal with rare quadrats but the issue needs to be better characterised and agreed by Egyptologists before deciding what to do. As with the basic 3 characters, data needs to be studied and evaluated before submitting a formal proposal.

Discussions in July yielded a consensus with TLA and Ramses projects on implementation of two of the three characters namely EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL JOINER and EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH VERTICAL JOINER, published as L2/16-227.

M-J Nederhof presented a discussion document L2/16-177 at the I&E meeting based on adapting his RES scheme as an alternative approach to control characters for Unicode quadrat sequences without using the horizontal or vertical joiners. This was followed by a revised document L2/16-210 with addendum L2/16-233 which outline two alternative versions and notations of his system.

There are many alternative ways one might define quadrat sequences using various levels of complexity but there would need to be convincing evidence to drop the vertical and horizontal joiners and/or require complex or hard to read sequences for simple quadrats. It is obviously important that any proposed alternatives are capable of implementation in current technology. 

Discussions continue on the Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS mailing list (see archives at http://evertype.com/pipermail/egyptian_evertype.com/). Egyptologists and others with an interest in the topic are encouraged to join and participate in or follow the list.

Status of the L2/16-018R proposal

L2/16-018R was published in January 2016 as a revision to the original May 2015 publication L2/15-123. No objections had been received by UTC during May-January so the proposal was put out to international ballot as a UTC recommendation in January 2016. Comments were received by UTC in April 2016 ( L2/16-090, my reply at L2/16-104) where specific objections were made to the EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH LIGATURE JOINER.

Following discussions outlined above, L2/16-018R is on hold until it is determined what additional features are required to obtain consensus. I suspect the earliest this can be reviewed by UTC is January 2017.

Over the next few months it would be really useful if comments, requirements or objections about any additions can be made in a timely fashion to UTC in future to avoid further unnecessary delays.

Bob Richmond

Some remarks about Unicode Hieroglyphic fonts

Some topics are so well known that often they are not even mentioned. This post is about one such topic namely that there are many modern fonts on computers and other digital devices so a writer or publisher needs to choose one or more that work for a specific purpose. Choose the wrong font for your content and the result will be be missing or unsatisfactory characters. This is true for hieroglyphic like every other writing system,

Currently all Unicode Egyptian Hieroglyphic font releases I know of implement the whole Unicode Standard (2009) basic repertoire of 1071 hieroglyphs. There are no subset fonts for specific purposes such as early school education where two hundred signs would be more than adequate. So right now we don't see missing characters or need to take a variety of fonts into account to a great extent.

With ongoing work to extend the Unicode repertoire and include quadrat shaping to make an actual writing system, this situation will likely change considerably. A font designer concerned with the classical phase of the writing system will not want to spend months or years dealing with thousands of specialist hieroglyphs attested only from the Ptolemaic period. A font designed to work well for Ramesside hieratic transcription into hieroglyphic cannot be expected to optimise quadrat arrangements irrelevant to hieratic. A font optimised for small print (e.g. 12pt - 18pt) may make different design choices for glyphs and quadrat shaping than one optimised for 24pt plus).

Furthermore decorative colour fonts are now possible using OpenType but such fonts may be limited in scope to specific purposes.

In short, over time we can expect a wide range of hieroglyphic fonts will evolve. As with modern writing systems. Some aspiring to beauty, others providing specialist functionality. Their scope of use will often be different.

First generation digital hieroglyphic systems (typically using one or another form of Manuel de Codage aka MdC coding), mask these issues. Specialist hieroglyphic software to date typically uses a single 'one size fits all' font such as a Gardiner or Hierogyphica derivation with a single fixed method of arranging hieroglyphs in quadrats. New thinking is needed to embrace a rich world of multiple fonts and take advantage of the Unicode principle of separating plain text encoding data from the fonts used to render the text.

Some of the difficulties in gaining consensus on next steps for Unicode appear to be grounded in the mistaken notion that Unicode should be used in exactly the same way as MdC practice as if the goal were a single Unicode hieroglyphic font that does everything an Egyptologist could ever ask for. There is room for a general purpose font or two - a fallback font - but it should be understood its a small part of the story for many purposes,

One practical consequence of font diversity is Unicode hieroglyphic in plain text can expect to show an 'unsupported character' glyph when displayed using a font that does not support the writers intent. Likewise a quadrat control character sequence will have visible control characters for quadrats the font does not support and might look like:

(actually all quadrats in this specific illustration will likely be fine in most fonts but it illustrates the principle).

This is no different to the situation with Unicode in many disciplines. Mathematical typesetting is a good complex example but even simple examples are commonplace in everyday life if you read beyond a-z. The solution is to understand what you are doing and use appropriate fonts, formats, and software tools for the task in hand. If specific fonts don't do the job you simply don't use them.

Like many concepts this topic will be trivial to understand once hieroglyphic is available for use as a writing system and multiple fonts are released. For now it needs a little imagination.

Historical note

As far as I know (and someone correct me if I am wrong!) the first hieroglyphic typeface was that used in the hieroglyphic dictionary and grammar of Samuel Birch, published in 1867. Next year, we can celebrate 150 years of hieroglyphs in print.

Facsimiles of typeface used in Samuel Birch's' Grammar and Dictionary from 1867. 

The Gardiner/Oxford metal typeface was cut around 60 years after Birch/Bonomi/Longman and several other fonts made and used during the intervening years. Lepsius/Theinhardt is probably the best known of these. The usual MdC situation with a single all-purpose font has a long tradition in print.

It is only recently that we are starting to see richer use of multiple fonts. A good example is Middle Egyptian Literature (James Allen, 2015) which makes effective use of a distinctive bold face.

Distinctive bold font in Middle Egyptian Literature (2015)

I expect we'll see many more innovations once the additions to Unicode are available and supported. We are approaching the beginning of a new era.


Bob Richmond