Re: Seeming hostility to conlang scripts?

On Wednesday, 10 June 2026 02:31:17 Central European Summer Time Mark E. 
Shoulson via Unicode wrote:
> On 6/9/26 6:42 PM, Gabriel Tellez via Unicode wrote:
> > The core issue is if these scripts should be in Unicode in the first
> > place. I have yet to be convinced that these scripts (pIqaD, Tengwar,
> > and Cirth) are used in any contexts that aren't related to their
> > universe/media of origin.
> > 
> > And no it's not "nobody uses X, except for X's users", it's *when* are
> > X's users actually using it. Like is pIqaD only used when dealing with
> > things related to Star Trek? That doesn't seem like enough usage to
> > me. One again I say, it's not Monopoly in pIqaD, it's *Star Trek
> > themed* Monopoly in pIqaD.

I would like to second this point.

> I still don't get why we feel it's necessary to "grade" the level (or
> breadth) of literature in a writing system.  It's true that a system
> which is used for nothing but education materials (in the same system)
> or only has material published by one author or a single publishing
> source is probably too idiosyncratic to be considered for encoding, but
> saying, "OK, you can write about love, revenge, pain, suffering, joy,
> sadness.... but so long as it's only in the Star Trek universe, that
> doesn't count as a diverse literature."  Where does Unicode get off
> telling people that some topics "don't count"?  Linear B was only ever
> used in the "Mycenean Greek world-setting", and our evidence of it deals
> with almost nothing except boring administrative records.  No poetry, no
> songs, no plays, no books.  Does  that mean it's too limited?

Given this meanwhile, I would like to look at it from an implementation 
perspective. For Teyvat Script, which is directly correlated to Latin, I would 
likely just make a Latin font that encodes these particular glyphs instead. If 
I were to, let's say, make a wiki website, I would not expect that font to be 
installed on the user's system. Rather, I would have the web browser retrieve 
it from a fonts server. Such an implementation would alleviate the need to use 
images for these glyphs instead, while also not needing any standardization 
effort.

My question for alphabets such as those used in Star Trek and Tolkien 
universes, would be to which extent such a solution would be viable, while 
retaining the ability to have a reasonably comprehensible source document for 
e.g. a website. For instance, I don't think it would be reasonable to expect 
writers to use a font, that encodes its characters on unrelated code points, 
that would then have to be used to write the website.

Granted, the private-use area might be useful for this... My concern with that 
would be the need for a specific keyboard that uses these code points, and/or a 
program that translates conventional character keys to the designated private-
use code points. Considering kli.org's affiliation to the Star Trek fandom, how 
is this currently done for Klingon?

> Asmus notes the similarity of fiction-based scripts to historic
> scripts.  (not "invented" scripts; ALL scripts are invented.  They don't
> grow on trees, you know.  And some encoded scripts are quite recent
> inventions.)  It's not about whether or not they're used for things
> other than their historic milieu.  It's about whether or not they are
> *used* by people, either as scholarly discussion, creative innovation,
> or historical recording.  As to Asmus' point about the need to wait and
> see and consider the impact, it's a fair enough point, but do note that
> proposals for Klingon stretch back *thirty* years.  And for good or ill,
> the actual writing system has changed very little in all that time.  I
> think the wait-and-see period is over.

When I first learned about conlangs from this thread, I liked thinking about 
them the way programmers think about esolangs. It appears that they are both 
similar in their respective environments, in that they both tend to be 
academic challenges performed by their creators. In that sense, they both 
differ from conventional human / programming languages, which emerge and evolve 
together with their "speakers" to enable day-to-day communication.

When thinking about Unicode as an append-only character space, that would make 
stability of those code points and their meaning paramount, as they cannot be 
modified after the fact. Conlangs having a tendency to be as artificially 
constructed as they are, challenge that notion. For pIqaD, this stabilization 
effort may have been done when, as kli.org mentions, Dr. Marc Okrand 
transformed the "guttural shouts" into a proper language. However, 30 years is 
not a long time, especially for writing systems. Granted, lack of change 
within that time may well be a saving grace here.

> According to what I've been told, the potential copyright problems are
> indeed what is stopping Unicode from encoding Klingon, even though the
> record says that isn't the reason.  Usage has already been
> demonstrated.  And indeed, it's reasonable enough to be cautious of
> those problems.

> > On Mon, Jun 8, 2026 at 3:57 AM David Starner via Unicode
> > <[email protected]> wrote:
> >     We can acknowledge the risk without agreeing to the argument. In the
> >     US, scripts have explicitly been refused copyright protection. When
> >     Cyan tried to register the Myst D'Ni script, the US Copyright Office
> >     responded with a refusal letter explaining that writing systems are
> >     not copyrightable in the US. I am not familiar with any contrary
> >     decision in any country, though many do permit copyrighting typefaces,
> >     which the US does not.

The legal issue does remain, and it would be wise to first obtain written 
permission from the respective rights holders. We cannot expect all regions of 
the world to refuse copyright on writing systems, but we should expect rights 
holders to be able to pursue their trademarks in all nations where they have 
registered those, as well as copyright in all nations that enforce its very 
concept.

-- 
[Met vriendelijke groet] [Best regards]
[Michael De Roover]
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[0] [2026-06-10 02:56 CEST]
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