> If I'm following you correctly, you are saying that some specialists argue that the distinction between cursive, blackletter etc. is the same as that between upper and lowercase?

No, that's not my position.

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> Fonts are not cases.

Those aren't fonts.

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> Different font/script families like cursive, blackletter, etc. all themselves include upper-case and lower-case variants

It's not clear to me why you felt the need to say this.

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> > it's letters that get a different letter-form because of rules about what's being written.
>
> This is an extremely abstract definition of case.

that is:

1. not a definition

2. not about case

3. not abstract

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> I also don't think see how it covers the different forms and combinations of letters in Perso-Arabic script, sine these are purely mechanical

Some are, some aren't. Sure, there are ligatures, but there are special forms for holy topics, and so forth.

Of course, I'm not talking about Perso-Arabic; I'm talking about Arabic. They're not exchangable that way.

Perso-Arabic is not how you describe that writing system, by the way. Perso-arabic is how you reference the specific branch of Arabic that's been bent to writing in Iran. It's meant to distinguish from Farsi, not to encompass Arabic as a whole.

Anyway, this shouldn't be surprising, since Arabic is an abjad, so it doesn't really handle this discussion, since it's got entire implicit letters.

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> I also don't necessarily agree that it covers the difference between blackletter and roman, since really this is more likely to be decided by who is doing the writing

My opinion is that you missed the purpose of my comment, which was not to talk about stylistic choices by authors.

Of course, as a user of the internet I am aware of things like fonts.

But since you're apparently a linguist, I'm sure that you're aware that in Europe, for about 400 years, the word "god" was written in what you appear to think is a different font, at a different size, in some countries even by law.

This is what I'm talking about. Not someone sitting in Word trying to make something look pretty; rather, language rules which a schoolteacher would use in grading something as correct or incorrect. Unicode doesn't encode stylistic choices, but it does encode language rules. If something is in Unicode, either it's an Emoji, or someone thought it was a valid part of language somewhere. Admittedly, that music is in there means the definition of language is being stretched a bit; still if it is in Unicode and isn't an emoji, it's because someone is trying to make a real world pre-existing rule usable.

It's got nothing to do with fonts, you'll find. There's a blackletter block in most fonts, and it looks different font to font.

I'll tie the knot.

There's an author of comedy - I think he might have recently passed on early alzheimer's - named Terry Pratchett. I always found his style to be similar to the better known Douglass Adams. His world theme was swords and sorcery rather than science fiction, but it's all about the wordplay and nonsense nonetheless.

Most of his books take place in a shared universe called "discworld," in which ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ gets her name written in small caps in every single book. (See how I did that? HN doesn't have fonts.)

Now, you might argue that that's a stylistic choice, and therefore doesn't qualify for discussion here. Indeed, if you did, I would even agree with you: that's my point, after all. I'd even skip the bitter argument about how smallcaps aren't small caps, because the letter width is different, the e and x heights are different, et cetera. Try to tell a typesetter "it's just a font" and you might get yelled at

I would say that the reason there's a meaningful difference is that no schoolteacher will ever mark your paper wrong due to not following Terry Pratchett's standards, where as schoolteachers *will* mark you wrong in Ecumenical School for not using blackletter when writing God.

Because there are rules. And even if you, apparently a linguist don't know about them, they're still there.

That is, of course, why Unicode has alternate letterforms, such as 𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗱, 𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤, 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝒶𝒻ℴ𝓇ℯ𝓂ℯ𝓃𝓉𝒾ℴ𝓃ℯ𝒹 𝒸𝓊𝓇𝓈𝒾𝓋ℯ, 𝓲𝓽𝓼 𝓫𝓸𝓵𝓭, 𝕕𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖-𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕦𝕔𝕜 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕤 for math, 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖑𝖊𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚'𝖗𝖊 𝖈𝖚𝖗𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖑𝖞 𝖆𝖗𝖌𝖚𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙.

Because they're not fonts! They're meaningfully distinct letter forms with well understood usage patterns. (Blackletter shows up twice, with identical symbols, once for math and once for religion, and there's talk of adding a third for physics, because 𝕮, 𝕮, and 𝕮 all mean different things, and Unicode's position is that they should have different character representations for different meanings, despite having potentially identical graphic distinctions.

Indeed, if you ask a linguist "when is the most common use in English of double-struck letters," and they'll probably have a ready answer for you.

Heck, the Unicode formal character names have the answer baked right in pretty often.

U+1D539 U+0042 MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE‑STRUCK CAPITAL B Bopf

Not a font, friend. Not even if you really believe it is.

If you need clarity on the matter, use your own tool: you wanted to remind me that blackletter "wasn't uppercase" (nobody said it was) because it has upper case and lower case variants. Well, here's some of your own medicine. Fonts, like Arial and Times New Roman, have their own distinct blackletter and double-struck representations. And they look different, in the way that fonts do. Because they need to support the valid, different letterforms. A blackletter meant for Arial will look terrible set into Times, or vice versa.

There is an actual right and wrong here. This isn't an issue of opinion.

Of course, if you're a linguist, all I really need to do is say "swiss eszett."

At any rate, maybe all of my textbooks are wrong. No, I'm not interested in digging them out and looking them up for you, and it does not compel me that a stranger says they're wrong until I spend time finding it. If you're evidence motivated, bring some. If not, fine by me. Since you're a linguist, and I'm just a lowly programmer, if you actually want to check reference, go right ahead, be my guest; I'm sure you own much more of it than I do.

It's irrelevant to me: Unicode has rules, they cover this topic, they're clear on the point, they aren't set on website discussions, and if you want to debate them, we'll see you at the next meeting.

Good luck. There's an awful lot of inertia behind how it's currently seen, and it's extensively supported by the literature in the free, publicly available unicode meeting minutes.