These both explain the problem in some detail. They also propose alternative combining classes for the Hebrew vowels without actually proposing that the existing Unicode definitions should be changed.
It should be noted that the alternative combining classes proposed in this document are for developers who want to do custom normalisation in a controlled text processing environment, with all the expected caveats about the classes being non-standard. A solution that works flawlessly to both encode and render Biblical Hebrew text is going to take a while (the proposed control character insertion model breaks current rendering implementations -- not sure why, but I'm looking into it). In the meantime, we have users who want to work with a typeface that can correctly render the entire Biblia Hebraica text in current apps, and developers who want to do normalisation in search queries in their software. The alternative combining classes are a hack that permits this while we await a definitive encoding solution from the UTC and updates to rendering implementations.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The sight of James Cox from the BBC's World at One,
interviewing Robin Oakley, CNN's man in Europe,
surrounded by a scrum of furiously scribbling print
journalists will stand for some time as the apogee of
media cannibalism.
- Emma Brockes, at the EU summit
