Re: Seeming hostility to conlang scripts?

On 5/26/26 6:32 PM, Rebecca Bettencourt via Unicode wrote:
> Unicode's "hostility" to conlang scripts has actually been 
> *decreasing* over the years. Such proposals used to be rejected 
> outright for not being notable or not having a large enough user 
> community. That is not the case anymore. Klingon, Sitelen Pona, 
> Tengwar, and Cirth have all actually been recognized as having a large 
> enough user community; the objections being raised now are actually 
> much more complicated issues to navigate: copyright status and stability.
>
> Unicode does not want to include Klingon without a letter from 
> Paramount's legal department stating that they will not sue anyone who 
> implements it, but Paramount simply does not care enough to spend 
> legal resources on that. Tengwar and Cirth are in the hands of the 
> Tolkien estate, which is extremely controlling about the use of their 
> intellectual property and is not going to give permission to encode 
> them. And while it's legally questionable whether a writing system can 
> actually be copyrighted, Unicode does not have the resources to find out.

It should be noted, though, that the only *official* reason for 
rejection of Klingon is still "because we don't want to be associated 
with Those Kinds of People."  The proposal to reject Klingon 
(https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2001/01212-RejectKlingon.html), adopted by 
Unicode (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2001/01183.htm) mentions nothing 
about IP problems or lack of usage.  This remains the reason it is on 
the "Not to be Encoded" list, even though (at the suggestion of Ken 
Whistler https://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2016-m11/0091.html) 
there was a proposal not to approve it, but just to remove it from the 
"No" list (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21155-klingon-req.pdf)  
Removing it from the "Not Encoded" list would have been a way to signal 
a lessening of hostility without actually doing anything (and thus 
without running risks of IP problems.)

Has the hostility been decreasing over the years?  Perhaps, even 
probably.  There has been unofficial recognition that "lack of usage" is 
no longer a valid argument against Klingon (after a new proposal, 
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16329-piqad-returns.pdf showed a great 
deal of usage.)  But there still seems to be something in the "dignity 
argument" (Klingon is beneath the dignity of Unicode, because only nerds 
speak it), brought down explicitly in the Proposal to Reject linked 
above and on this mailing list 
https://corp.unicode.org/pipermail/unicode/2021-September/009589.html

AFAIK, Sitelen Pona is, indeed, insufficiently fleshed out (but I may 
not be well-enough informed), and the Tolkien estate has come out 
explicitly against the encoding of Cirth and Tengwar (which I think 
deserve encoding more than Klingon does, but whose IP situation is 
rather more clear against it.)

Several new writing systems which have been encoded are no older than 
some conlang scripts, like Adlam (1989), Osage (2006), Signwriting 
(1974) (and honestly, the IP status of some of them is not clear either, 
though it's definitely an issue in things like Blissymbolics and I think 
maybe Mandombe), so it clearly isn't a matter of needing to be an *old* 
established system... just an established one, and these did demonstrate 
usage and a community.

So, yeah, the hostility may be on the decline.  It's still the official 
stance, though.

~mark