Oh dear. That's what I was afraid you meant. In all those cases, I believe the correct interpretation is that the kholam is attached to the left of the preceding consonant (resh, lamed, zayin, yod, etc.), not to the alef. That the point appears to be over the alef is a typesetter's (or font designer's) decision based on aesthetics, or just irregular typography. It should certainly not be coded that way. (What I mean is: if we had a "right kholam" vowel that combined with its *preceding* base character on the right side--like shin dot--it would still be wrong to encode rosh as <resh-alef-right kholam-shin-shin dot>.)
I agree. A potential 'right holam' mark should not be used for the weak alef or for shin. There are already perfectly good mechanisms for handling the repositioning of holam relative to the consonant preceding these and, as Ted notes, the precise positioning relative to the two consonants is discretionary but the holam is definitely understood to belong to the first consonant, not the following alef or shin.
This is a different case from the vav, although until now we've been trying to tackle the latter in the same way.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The sight of James Cox from the BBC's World at One,
interviewing Robin Oakley, CNN's man in Europe,
surrounded by a scrum of furiously scribbling print
journalists will stand for some time as the apogee of
media cannibalism.
- Emma Brockes, at the EU summit
