[XeTeX] Egyptian hieroglyphs in XeTeX

[Robert B. Gozzoli]

Dear List members,
I am an Egyptologist trying to sort out the implementation of Egyptian
hieroglyphs in XeTeX. I understand that in October Unicode 5.1 will
come out, and together with it, a list of hieroglyphs.
While I have already a font to work with, the problem is how can I
cluster, scaling and or rotation of signs.
I cannot write hieroglyphs such as the Western alphabet as sometimes
there are as many as 5 signs in the space of capitals WD. Moreover,
hieroglyphs can be written in lines or columns, similar to Japanese or
Chinese.
At the moment, I am using a specialised word processor, where I can
type ASCII codes, and then copy and paste them, if I am in Word or
similar processor. In TeX, I can save as picture and then insert it in
such a way. But for very short sentences, no longer than a few signs,
I would like to use hieroglyphs as a "normal" Unicode font.
I know that I am quite anticipating the times, the Unicode standard
has not come out yet, but do you know how difficult may such
implementation be?

I can send you examples of clustering, if you need more explanations.
I
I thank you for any help. I have been working with many word
processor, and I undertstand the possibilities of LaTeX. I would like
to be experienced enough before my next book..

Best regards,

Robert Gozzoli,
University of Siam, Thailand