Kent wrote: > Kenneth Whistler wrote: > > > Second, there is the question of cursive joining for Arabic. > > I don't know anything in the Unicode Standard that states that > > a combining enclosing mark breaks cursive ligation. It stands > > to reason that it *should*, but I don't know anything that > > requires it. > > Well, according to the Unicode standard, it used to be break > the joining on one side (the right side, unless one follows the > bidi algorithm literally, and do the join analysis after bidi, > in which case it would be the left side). I complained about > this (and other things about joining properties), suggesting > that "Me" characters (like an enclosing circle) should break > the joining on both sides. But the UTC decision was the opposite, > but equally good; Me characters should (shall?) not break the > joining on any side. This decision was communicated to the > bidi list recently:
Ah yes, I had forgotten about that decision, which has not yet been rolled out into data files. (As of now, in Unicode 4.0.1, gc=Me are not Transparent. With this change in place, it seems to me that the case is quite clear *for* separate encoding of any circled Arabic letter used as a symbol. If the sequence <062D, 20DD> were used, instead, it would cursively join inappropriately with neighboring Arabic characters, unless surrounded by ZWNJ as well. --Ken
