On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Abi Lover wrote:
> [...] The ýexperiences of Connie, who has posted severa messages on this
> mailing list, and ýexpressed his frustrations at not being able to spell
> the character properly in ýUnicode compliant software and fonts, such as
> Microsoft's Times New Roman, ýdemonstrates how that can hapepen.
Microsoft's Times New Roman is Unicode compliant, but simply does not
support some characters or scripts properly. It also has many bugs for
Persian.
That is the exact *current* situation of some font. This does not have any
relations to standardization. We should not standardize things based on
current support available support in a specific system.
BTW, if you have the time, install Red Hat 7.3. You can type Persian in
some of the KDE programs, and it supports Hamza Above in some of the
preinstalled fonts. No need to install anything additional.
> Even Microsoft recognises the need to identify this glyph as a separate
> ýcharacter in the Farsi character set.
Microsoft does not have a Farsi character set, but just a Farsi keyboard.
> If you take a look at their Farsi keyboard ýon their Web site, you will
> find that it has a separate key assigned to <heh + ýhamzeh above>. But
> it maps to U+06C0! They probably don't know that this ýcharacter is not
> compatible with the Farsi script.
They know, but they don't pay enough attention, simply since they don't
have enough market. Both me and Arash Rezaiizadeh have nagged to their
developers continuously about their bugs and problems, and they only fix
some of them if they don't forget it.
As a famous example, we have been nagging and asking them to fix an
obvious bug in their Farsi Yeh support just a few days after they released
IE 5.0 (the first effort was reporting the bug through their Technical
Support web page). But even with the latest release of Windows XP service
packs, some of their fonts remain buggy.
> But the trouble is that if ýthey removed this mapping from their
> keyboard, they would have no alternative ýUnicode character to map it
> to, because the character does not exist in the ýUnicode standard.ý
They should have HAMZA ABOVE on their keyboard instead, as we have told
them many times.
> but there is no denying that the ýcharacter needs to be at least
> represented in the official Farsi keyboard,
I don't agree. Do you know any Persian pre-Unicode software developed in
Iran who has it on the keyboard? It is only Microsoft that has mistakenly
put it on the keyboard. "Lam+Alef" is also common in Persian, or even
"Meem+Yeh". Do you want a key for those?
> and ýif necessary mapped to a ligature representing the shape, and font
> designers ýshould be encouraged to add such a ligature to their fonts.ý
Ligatures are responsiblities of fonts. They have no relation to
keyboards. If you want a "Lam+Alef" on your keyboard, the keyboard driver
should generate two character for that key, and then the layout engine
should merge them again to get the ligature.
About font designers, we are not even planning to standardize anything for
them. We are not in such a position. We can only provide advice to them
(as we are currently doing).
> It seems to me utterly illogical that characters such as <alef + hamze
> above> or ýý<vav + hamzeh above> etc., all of which are essentially "Arabic"
> characters, ýshould all be represented, and have separate keys assigned to
> them in what is ýafter all the official PERSIAN keyboard, simply because the
> ARABS have had the ýgood sense to ensure that THEIR language has been
> correctly represented in the ýUnicode standard; but <heh + hamzeh>, which is
> uniquely Farsi character, and is ýused more frequently in Farsi than all
> those other characters combined, should ýbe omitted, simply because the
> Iranians have not had the good sense to ensure ýtheir language is correctly
> represented. I think that that is a bit of a ýdisgrace.ý
Oh! So it is just nationalistic talk? I'm not in the game anymore.
> I know from personal experience that the great majority of Farsi speakers
> prefer ýto spell this character in it traditional form rather than in its
> modern ýproposed variant
I completely agree. Users need Heh+HamzaAbove. So in all pieces of
software I have ever worked on, including FarsiTeX, I have tried my best
to get it in place. (It may be interesting for you that one of the reasons
our fonts are delayed, is finding some way to support the combination on
Windows 2000, which is based on Unicode 2.0 that lacks HAMZA ABOVE.)
Some other related note: I prefer using "Heh+ZWNJ+FarsiYeh" for {ezaafe}.
That's my personal preference. Always, I type it: Heh, Shift+Space, Yeh.
Actually four keys. And I put good time to make sure I have not missed a
single one in a document I have written. But will I ask for its inclusion
in a standard keyboard? No. Simplicity may be more important for a
keyboard layout. Also, the limited number of keys on the keyboard won't
let you do that.
> (4) It can be more efficient, if it is ýentered with one keystroke
> instead of two
Just point me to a keyboard layout besides Microsoft's one that has the
combination.
> Now it may be that the ýdrafters of the IT standard do not agree with
> this view. They may prefer to ýspell it with a <yeh> instead of a
> <hamzeh>. If so, they are entitled to their ýopinions, and we would
> respect their views. But they don't have the right to ýimpose their
> views on the rest of the Farsi speaking world. I am sure that they
> ýwould say that they are not trying to impose their views. Well, in
> theory, that ýmay be true. But in practice, that is what it amounts to.ý
That's well-written and explicit.
Although I don't agree that there is a limitation, I wish to restate this:
There is no obligation in following the standard we have written. No one
will be required to conform to it. It is not an obligatory standard in
Iran. It is just an informative text, and a recommendation.
I won't restate again what I had written many times. I may not even have
the time to read emails from the guy behind the "Abi Lover" nickname. The
new members of the mailing list are kindly asked to read the mailing list
archives at:
http://lists.sharif.edu/pipermail/farsiweb/
and the text we are debating on, at the bottom of Page 15 of the text of
the standard:
http://www.farsiweb.info/standard/
if they want to find what is happening here.
roozbeh
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