RE: [farsiweb] Re: [PersianComputing] Persian Keyboard Layout Preview
It's ARABIC LETTER ALEF MAKSURA [U+0649]. Its ISOLATED and FINAL forms are like ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH [U+06CC], so we show it in the layout as INITIAL form. But doesn't ALEF MAKSURA appear mostly at the end of words, i.e. in its final or isolated forms? What's more, in Arabic, when you add a personal suffix (etc.) to ALEF MAKSURA, it will assume medial/initial forms *with dots*... (This is why I found the dotless initial form on your draft keyboard difficult to interpret.) As Roozbeh said, some characters only use in Koranic texts. I wonder where you have drawn the border line between Unicode characters that are used only in Koranic texts, and other symbols such as cantillation marks or calligraphic elements such as U+FDF4, U+FDFA, U+FDFB, etc. (these Unicode values are given for reference only, not because I advocate making Arabic presentation forms available via direct keyboard input). Traditionally, there have been special calligraphic fonts for all these add-on characters but they weren't easy to handle. I wonder whether it would not make sense to design a special (extended) keyboard for them, which may go hand-in-hand with the creation of suitable OT fonts. Are there any efforts made in this direction? Lastly, a question related to the SHIFT+8 key: It's presently ASTERISK (U+002A, but wouldn't it be more appropriate for Farsi context to use this position for the ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR (U+066D) symbol, and move the ASTERISK somewhere else, e.g. to ALT+8? Strangely, the ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR symbol has *six* points in Arial Unicode MS and *eight* points in Tahoma. How comes? :-) Best regards, Peter ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
[PersianComputing] RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows
There is a difference. Dead keys are typed before the base letter. These are typed after the base letter. Correct. A Unicode wordprocessor package in the creation of which I participated some 10 years ago called the latter variety accent modifier keys (which isn't very clear either). The question remains why you provide direct keyboard input for combining hamza madda. Are there any letter combinations other than with alef/ya/waw that can be created via combination? We want, say, modern Baluchi script as written in Iran. LoC will probably provide us with every Arabic letters that has ever been used in any Baluchi. I see your point. The best approach would probably be to ask a local publisher who publishes newspapers or magazines in these languages. But many of them may use patched fonts or simplications or other workarounds (I've seen accents added in handwriting for Pashto and even Dari!), so there is no guarantee of standard usage as well unless someone in your country eventually comes up with an official standard and provides workable technical solutions. As to Kurdish written in Arabic script, there may be variations due to the same reason. For example, I have seen texts where three dots are used in lieu of the caret-alike symbol that seems to be the one used in standard Kurdish (and in prestigious Kurdish dictionaries that I've consulted). My own experience comes mainly from occasional typesetting for the local Kurdish community here in C.Europe (among them, some well-known writers from Iraqi Kurdistan), but I can by no means guarantee that the Kurdish they write is identical with the Kurdish written in Iran... Let me give you an example. There is a certain character in Unicode, a Hah with two vertical dots over it, and it was mentioned as being a Pashto letter. We found that it's not used in modern Pashto at all. Unicode experts said that it comes from the librarians, so it should be used in older orthographies. [...] The same is true for traditional Urdu or Sindhi orthographies (e.g., letters with four dots), and I am sure you'll find the same phenomenon in many other languages (just think of Traditional Chinese versus Simplified Chinese which are now getting confused in Unicode so that the borderline can no longer be clearly drawn). In other words, whether you want these special characters for occasional use in a keyboard layout is a question where you draw the borderline... Best regards, Peter ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
[PersianComputing] RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows
On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote: The question remains why you provide direct keyboard input for combining hamza madda. Are there any letter combinations other than with alef/ya/waw that can be created via combination? Yes. Heh. (I've seen accents added in handwriting for Pashto and even Dari!) Well, I've seen a whole Dari book typeset with a Pashto typewriter and then an additional slash added to each and every Gaf by hand. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
RE: [PersianComputing] RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows
Remember that accents are different from HARAKATs. We only discussed combining symbols (hamza madda), not short vowels. Peter ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
