As nobody seems to share my exasperation about damma, dammatan, damma with dot being encoded a second time, let's move on.
I had always hoped that "locale" would solve "my" problems, had hoped that there would be locale like "pak-quran," "nigeria-quran" "panarab-quran" or "quran-qalun", and that intelligent software and well informed font designers would do all the tricks necessary. Now I see that -- in the absence of locales for Arabic script wolof for ajami or for Arabic script fula -- locale shapes of Arabic characters have been encoded a second time, I want to ask: What are the chances for encoding variants of Arabic letters that are indispensable for the printing a locally appropriate editions of the Qur'an? On the picture from an edition by the King Fahd complex for the printing of the Holy Qur'an you can see both Western shapes of damma, and Western Quranic shape of ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE (U+0626) As you can see there are two clear differences two the normal shape of the letter: -- the dots are not discarded (the hamza is placed between the two dots) -- the hamza sits below (because there is a kasra too). On one level it is the same character as the one already encoded. On an other level it looks VERY different and the local community only accepts this shape -- otherwise the Saudi institution would not have bothered too produce this fine locally appropriate version of the Holy Qur'an. Should ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH TWO DOTS AND HAMZA BELOW be encoded? Michael
<<attachment: warsh_saudi.jpg>>
