InScribeX
This is really just background information for the curious.
InScribeX from Saqqara Technology is a technical approach to software and resources for Ancient Egyptian on computer. It started off in 2005 as an experiment to bring InScribe 2004 to MacOS X and Linux as well as introducing new features into the Windows version of InScribe. The X refers to cross-platform.
Four years on, it has turned out that the first deployment of InScribeX will be an internet based application - InScribeX Web. Mac and Linux are supported as well as Windows. IXW reflects a change of thinking from the original notion of deploying Mac and Linux desktop applications, although this possibility very much remains open for the future.
By 2006, it became apparent that it was possible to envisage Egyptian Hieroglyphs becoming part of the Unicode Standard at last and this would be fundamental to a standards based approach to InScribeX. In 2008, a 'Gardiner set' of hieroglyphs was approved for inclusion in the ISO/IEC 10646 character repertoire to be included in Unicode 5.2 (publication expected October 2009).
Early prototyping of InScribeX was done using both Java and C#/.Net programming environments. For technical and pragmatic reasons, the C#/.Net model was preferred although there is no reason in principle a Java version could not be resurrected if there was any reason to. C#/.Net is a reasonable cross-platforms choice as it is well supported in Windows and the Novell 'Mono Project' provides what is necessary on Mac, Linux and other systems.
Many of the ideas from InScribeX are finding their way into new versions of InScribe for Windows. InScribe 2004SE is a second edition of InScribe 2004 that includes some InScribeX elements. InScribe 3 as it is now named goes futher. These are native Windows desktop application written in C++ so the concepts are applied, not the actual C# software.
By early 2008 it had become apparent that a new software platform from Microsoft - Silverlight 2.0 - was likely going to be an excellent delivery vehicle for bringing InScribeX to the Internet on Windows and the majority of Apple Mac systems.. Furthermore Novell through the 'Moonlight' project was bringing the same capabilities to Linux (and potentially other devices). Silverlight 2.0 was released in October 2008 and a prototype InScribeX looked very promising. Originally, InScribeX developments were planned to follow the release of the next InScribe for Windows. However it became clear that by taking some features online through what is now InScribeX Web it was possible to resolve some practical difficulties in making what was a very big step from InScribe 2004 to its successor.
As of Summer 2009, InScribeX Web is available as a technology preview and it is likely that most InScribeX-related activity will be about this internet oriented software. All the same much of the software has potentiol use in Windows .Net or Mac/Linux (Mono) desktop applications once current projects are completed.