RE: Separate Character?
ReneZ > 29-05-2020, 06:12 AM
This is the essence of the difficulty in transliterating an unknown script.
One cannot be certain whether some observed differences indicate that there is a different character, or whether this is a handwriting variation.
With known languages, one has the context to help.
Basic Eva inherited a lot from the existing transliterations, mainly Currier and FSG, in which these shapes were all considered the same character, which both transliterated as '8'. There is an extended Eva character, number 152 (transliterated as @152; ) which looks like the right-hand example, but it appears only 3 times in the ZL file.
On the other hand, the v101 alphabet recognises three different forms. The simple 8, the one that looks like the right-hand figure, and a third one that is open at the bottom. They are transliterated as '8', '7' and '6' , and appear 10,346 , 2715 and 114 times respectively.
The v101 has many such examples. The best known are the variations of Sh with different plumes, but also f and p are both split into two types, depending on whether the horizontal bar ends with a hook or not.