Salaam Mohammed, I have been thinking about this superscript alef problem.
> This is a proof to my point, they are all correct, > no doubt here. > Because it's not on the lam nor on the waw so every > mushaf tries > to put it somewhere between them. > It's a separate Alef letter, can you please > consider that? Yes now I understand your point. I was misguided by Unicode's description of superscript alef U+0670. Unfortunately superscript alef U+0670 is described in the Arabic code chart as: "ARABIC LETTER SUPERSCRIPT ALEF � actually a vowel sign, despite the name" http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0600.pdf This description by those who supplied the Arabic input into Unicode (which as far as I hear is mainly IBM Egypt) did not take into account the usage of superscript alef in Quran'ic orthographies. In contemporary Quran orthography (King Fuad and manuscripts that are copied from it including the one printed by QuranComplex) superscript alef is not used as a vowel sign. One rare example that is contrary to this in Quran'ic orthography is in Ottoman spelling, where superscript alif is used in the same way as madda, also used in contemporary non-qur'anic spelling. Rather in the King Fuad codex full vocalization is extended to superscript alif. In combination with another rule, the glottal stop followed by any long vowel is always rendered by a chairless hamza. In conclusion the description of U+0670 in the Arabic code chart should be changed. It is misleading. Once this description is changed to be compatible with Quran'ic usage then there is no need for a new superscript alef character anymore. So in this case it seems to me that Item 8 should be a proposal to change the description of U+0670 superscript alef rather than a new character proposal. I don't think this change of description would break backwards compatibility so hopefully it is possible - unlike U+0621 where it is too late any more to change the description of the hamza character because it breaks existing Farsi texts. Please supply your thoughts. Thank you and best regards, Mete _______________________________________________ General mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general
