Abdulhaq Lynch wrote: >> Hi Mete >> >> first off, I respect yours and Thomas' opinions. Of course we will >> end up having to agree to differ. In this forum really we are just >> influencing Meor, M Yusuf et al. in the work they do - they can >> choose whichever method they want of course, we can only give ideas. >> I really don't mind which solution they choose (honestly!). >> >> I don't expect what I say here to affect Thomas and hence Unicode, >> as Thomas already has long-thought-out, well-formed and detailed >> plans of his own in this regard.
This is not completely true. In the course of time I picked up the intellectually bad habit to compromise and accept bad concepts based on arguments like 500.000.000 Elvis Presley fans can't be wrong. E.g., In my very first designs I encoded tanween graphemically accurate as repeated vowels. Since the 500.000.000 Elvis Presley fans decided on encoding nunated vowels a separate graphemes (to my chagrin, because of the unnecesary loss of the equation /yawmu-n/ = al-yawmu/ etc.), I decided that repeated vowels could be used to encode one of the phonetical variants (sequential tanween). Meor's luadable effort has helped me to return to my original position: encode graphemes, not glyphs. Keep the tanween graphemically intact, this will improve searchability. So I recently changed my position regarding tanween according to the following formula, that I hope this community will endorse: tanween = <vowel> <vowel> + [optional] <modifier> <vowel>= fatha / dhamma / kasra <modifier>= tamweem / sequentializer For backward compatibility, <vowel> <vowel> = fathatan / dhammatan / kasratan >>>> The other is that this solution, as I understand it, depends on >>>> OpenType capability font rendering to work. >>> It doesn't depend on OpenType capability. OpenType is just one of >>> the font technologies you can use to build fonts that can render >>> complex Arabic. You could surely use any other technology you wish >>> to use. Although the font technology you are using will probably >>> have to be advanced enough to do certain things such as contexual >>> substitutions, etc. OpenType is just one of the technologies which >>> is able to do these. Open Type is just a file format, applicable on existing TT and PS based font files. Any well written parser can handle OT: Adobe uses a different engine from MS. DecoType has again its own. >> Thomas and yourself are dismissive of older technology. However, >> most of the people in the world who are inclined to view the quran >> on their PC or what-have-you cannot afford to pay MS for their copy >> of Windows. Why should they be excluded from the solution? Who are >> we doing this for? This is a serious concern. The best solution would be a dedicated effort by the open source community to build a new OT parser, so that you can deal with problems without red tape. >>> We are not proposing to glue two glyphs together. You can compare >>> this non-texual character to the ZWNJ (zero width non joiner) >>> character in a way (although they are still quite different) in the >>> fact that they are both non-texual. I think you are confusing this >>> with Tom's other proposal, which is to declare canonival >>> equivalence between a fatha+fatha sequence and fathatan, and so >>> forth. That is a seperate issue. I think we haven't made this >>> clear so I apologize. This non-texual character is a seperate >>> request regardless of whether there is a request to declare >>> canonival equivalence between a fatha+fatha sequence and fathatan, >>> and so forth. Even if there is no canonival equivalence declared >>> between a fatha+fatha sequence and fathatan this additional >>> codepoint is needed. >>> >> >> I do understand what you mean, I'm exaggerating a bit to make a >> point. But the fact remains that if this proposal goes through, then >> how can I represent two fathas side-by-side? Granted, this will not >> come up often, but if you look at arabic grammar books, tajweed >> books, sarf books etc it's quite possible that this would be a >> requirement. M Yousif made this point a long time ago. I hope you understand that nominal <vowel> <vowel> will rendered exactly like fathatan / dhammatan / kasratan. Regards, t
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