...I would think that the issue here is whether "i with retroflex hook below" is a suitable description of this character. It may be a reasonable match for the glyph. But this is not a mark of retroflection (although arguably of back articulation (cf. U+0320)), and to call it one is probably an anachronism. There is probably no historical link with the retroflex hook.
Not a good idea: the Nogai and Khakass languages appear to have used both
gha/oi and "i with lower right hook" according to
http://www.writingsystems.net/languages/nogai/nogailatin.htm and
http://www.writingsystems.net/languages/khakass/khakasslatin.htm .
That's a rewording of what I meant, if my sentence was not clear and was not already demonstrating that "i with lower retroflex hook" is distinct from "oi/gha".
Now with the new Peter's remark, this "i with lower retroflex hook" has to be distinct from the small b/soft sign (inherited from cyrillic), even if both could be considered in Azeri as being mostly glyph variants of the same Azeri character.
...
I would prefer a new character with no compatibility decomposition; or if there is any compatibility decomposition it should be directly to dotless i which is the modern equivalent.
It seems that we do actually need two new character pairs, this one and also the soft sign lookalike - unless it is considered acceptable to use the Cyrillic characters in Latin text cf. the use of Latin Q and W in Cyrillic Kurdish.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
