On Thursday, July 31, 2003 6:32 PM, Peter Kirk wrote: > We mustn't forget that unusual combinations are sometimes meaningful. > For example, there are languages which use Hebrew base characters with > Arabic vowel points. We mustn't make these illegal sequences in Unicode > without very good reason.
But we shouldn't introduce the possibility for new, meaningless sequences without very good reason, either. A new character is being discussed as a minimal change needed to address a specific need in Hebrew. Let's not introduce generality for the sake of generality. (Personally, I'd be curious as to why there are three characters HEBREW LETTER SHIN, HEBREW POINT SHIN DOT, and HEBREW POINT SIN DOT instead of three characters HEBREW LETTER SHIN, HEBREW LETTER SHIN WITH SHIN DOT, and HEBREW LETTER SHIN WITH SIN DOT, without the need for alphabetic presentation forms for the latter two. Was this alternative considered and rejected? If so, the rationale might be useful to this discussion.) I certainly hope it isn't that people prefer a new combining mark instead of a letter because, "Gee, there'll be lots of things people will be able to do with this!" Save it for Ken's new block of combining dots. :) Ted Ted Hopp, Ph.D. ZigZag, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1-301-990-7453 newSLATE is your personal learning workspace ...on the web at http://www.newSLATE.com/
