On Saturday 25 June 2005 11:45, Thomas Milo wrote: > > It aims to encode plain text, whatever that means. In the case of Arabic, I > take that to mean "graphemic". This is a kind of "semantic" but limited to > abstract units writing: probably what Mete calls scriptic. The reason I > think this is in line with the Unicode approach for Arabic is that Unicode > rejected the idea of encoding contextual variants or ligatures (the > ligature block is their for legacy compatibility only). > > The term graphemic is coined after Prague School Phonology: like the > hierarchy archiphonemes - phonemes - allophones in a sound system, a > writing system has archigraphemes - graphemes - allographs. > > archigrapheme = abstract: the common element(s) between two or more > graphemes > grapheme = astract: the minimal distinctive unit of writing / conrete: all > allographs needed for the contextual representation of the same letter > allograph = concrete: rule-based, predictable visual instance or variation > of a grapheme / part of a ligature representing a grapheme > > Unicode should record only record graphemes and archigraphemes. Allographs > fall in te domain of font technology. >
Thanks for the info - when I get time I'll try to read a book about the subject. wassalaam _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general
