an announcement...

Folks, I just wanted to tell you all I'm now working on a new sub-project=
...=20
well actually several.

1) Not one, but two unified Indian scripts for northern and southern=20
languages (i.e. Indo-Aryan except Sinhala and Maldivian, and Dravidian=20
respectively).  The former a simplified form of Devanagari=20
(Hindi/Marathi/Nepali); the latter a simplified form of Grantha=20
(Tamil/Malayalam).  These new scripts are going to be more alphabetic=20
(rather than an alphasyllabry), and more linear (with no subscripting, an=
d=20
only the special conjunct forms for _ks._, _jn~_ etc.)

I probably will create a Gujarati-like 'headless' form for the northern=20
script.  Also, both scripts will be more cursive, requiring less strokes,=
=20
but a 'Roman' or 'Gothic' fontface is possible.

2) I got my first book on Nostratic!  (whew, 40 bucks for just over 100=20
pages...)  So you'll see a lot more posting on Tech and Quaelitz.  By the=
=20
way, Tech (of East Africa) is going to be a West Nostratic language (thus=
=20
based on Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European and Kartvelian), while Quaelitz (of=20
northern India/Central Asia) is going to be based on Dravidian, Altaic an=
d=20
Uralic.  (I have a feeling I'm going to end up with Quenya for the latter=
,=20
oh well...)

3) I've also been studying up on Unicode and the current and proposed=20
scripts.  In most of these, I've found one or more glyphs representing=20
religious concepts, especially concerning the Godhead: Devanagari has an =
OM=20
glyph, Arabic one for Allah, Syriac a Yah (YHWH God) symbol, Coptic the=20
Stavros (the Cross, which stupid ol' me thought was a <rt> ligature), and=
 a=20
proposal for including a Hebrew glyph for the Tetragrammation (proposal=20
devised by none other than Mark Shoulson!  where is he by the way...)

The Techians (at least the Christians), by the way use a number of symbol=
s=20
of Greek/Coptic and Latin origin: Chi-Rho, IHS (Jesus), IC=AFXC (Jesus=20
Christ), a symbol for the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so on.  The=20
Quaelitistanis, on the other hand, just write out Allah in Latin script i=
f=20
they use Latin (a Turkish-like transliteration system with a LOT of funky=
=20
diacritics), else they use the familiar special Arabic glyph if using=20
Arabic.

More later... and still more...

Danny

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