At 04:30 AM 12/3/2003, Peter Kirk wrote:Understood. But in fact TUS contains some quite detailed rules for Arabic shaping. I am only asking that there should be similar rules for other scripts.
An adequate proposal for a complex script should surely include a proper account of the script behaviour and sample glyphs of presentation forms. And so such a proposal should include all that is needed for a developer, and is available some time before the new script is officially standardised.
I disagree. What you describe may be desirable, but in no way is it necessary. What is important to document in a proposal is what is necessary to *encode* text, not to display it. Remember that a lot of work was done on encoding complex scripts in Unicode before there were adequate font and shaping engine technologies in place to implement the character/glyph model as envisaged. Also, for some complex scripts, especially Arabic, how do you define what is 'needed for a developer' independent of the particular script style, individual typeface design and specific rendering technology? What is needed for Tom Milo to render Arabic using his technology is quite different from what is needed to render the same text in the same style in a typical OpenType implementation.
As for different script styles, there may of course be variants but each script has a typical variant, and any major deviations from that should be considered a separate script. I am not suggesting normative rules, just implementation recommendations.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
