For the record, let me state that I for one have not yet agreed with any of the comments made recently: I do not agree that the combining classes need be modified, nor with any specific proposal. While I understand the difficulties some renderers have, I am not convinced that they are Unicode problems.
I plan to meet with some of my colleagues next week and discuss the issues within the context of the SII, the Israeli NB. Jony > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 3:37 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Yerushala(y)im - or Biblical Hebrew > > > > Philippe Verdy wrote on 07/22/2003 09:18:35 PM: > > > If there's an agreement about what should have been the > best combining > > classes... > > Describing what would be the best combining classes can be > tricky for RTL scripts if the canonical ordering is intended > not only for purposes of normalization and string comparison > but also as a preferred order for storage and editing > interaction. The reason is that the combining classes are > intentionally based on visual relative position wrt the base > character, not logical. Arbitrarily, a LTR ordering ... < > below left < below < below right < ... is used, meaning that > combinations of marks will be sequenced in the opposite order > to the underlying line order, and so not in the logical order > in terms of which users will be thinking. As an example using > Hebrew, for a combination of (say) beth with qamats and dehi, > preferred classes according to the visual basis on which > classes are defined would be > > qamats = 220 > dehi = 222 > > and so you'd get an encoded sequence of < beth, qamats, dehi > >. But for the user, the pre-positive dehi, being to the > right of the qamats, would probably be thought of as occuring > before the qamats. > > Now, I said above that the classes were based arbitrarily on > a visual LTR order. A RTL ordering ... < below right < below > < below left < ... could have been used, but then the same > mismatch would exist for LTR scripts. So, the problem is not > with the arbitrary choice of LTR visual ordering for the classes. > > > > - Peter > > > -------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- > Peter Constable > > Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International > 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA > Tel: +1 972 708 7485 > > > > > >
