Re: Standalone Superscript Alef (Item 8)

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

Salaam Mohammed,

I have been thinking about this superscript alef
problem.

>  This is a proof to my point, they are all correct,
> no doubt here.
>  Because it's not on the lam nor on the waw so every
> mushaf tries
>  to put it somewhere between them.
>  It's a separate Alef letter, can you please
> consider that?

Yes now I understand your point. I was misguided by
Unicode's description of superscript alef U+0670.
Unfortunately superscript alef U+0670 is described in
the Arabic code chart as:

"ARABIC LETTER SUPERSCRIPT ALEF
• actually a vowel sign, despite the name"

http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0600.pdf

This description by those who supplied the Arabic
input into Unicode (which as far as I hear is mainly
IBM Egypt) did not take into account the usage of
superscript alef in Quran'ic orthographies. In
contemporary Quran orthography (King Fuad and
manuscripts that are copied from it including the one
printed by QuranComplex) superscript alef is not used
as a vowel sign. One rare example that is contrary to
this in Quran'ic orthography is in Ottoman spelling,
where superscript alif is used in the same way as
madda, also used in contemporary non-qur'anic
spelling. Rather in the King Fuad codex full
vocalization is extended to superscript alif. In
combination with another rule, the glottal stop
followed by any long vowel is always rendered by a
chairless hamza.

In conclusion the description of U+0670 in the Arabic
code chart should be changed. It is misleading. Once
this description is changed to be compatible with
Quran'ic usage then there is no need for a new
superscript alef character anymore.

So in this case it seems to me that Item 8 should be a
proposal to change the description of U+0670
superscript alef rather than a new character proposal.
I don't think this change of description would break
backwards compatibility so hopefully it is possible -
unlike U+0621 where it is too late any more to change
the description of the hamza character because it
breaks existing Farsi texts.

Please supply your thoughts.

Thank you and best regards,

Mete