I was reviewing the Roadmap for the SMP (http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/), in comparison with the list of proposed new scripts, and found a few anomalies.

"Hittite (Anatolian) Hieroglyphs/Luvian" is listed as a proposed new script, with a draft proposal, but seems to be missing from the Roadmap.

There is no mention in the Roadmap of Egyptian Hieratic and Demotic. Is the intention to unify these with Egyptian Hieroglyphic? While I can see arguments for doing so, Hieroglyphic and Demotic are certainly so different that someone who knew one but not the other could read a wedding invitation or menu in the other. So by that test, which has been put forward as decisive in another case, these are separate scripts.

Similarly with the two varieties of Meroitic, which are so different that it has been suggested printing two different glyph tables in the standard - although there seems to be a one-to-one mapping between the two sets of glyphs.

Finally, another historic script not yet roadmapped is the recently rediscovered Caucasian Albanian. See http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/Cauc_alb.htm and http://armazi.uni-frankfurt.de/indexe.htm?armaz3.htm, also http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai113_folder/113_articles/113_zaza_script_ashes.html for a more popular account.

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Peter Kirk
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http://www.qaya.org/





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