Re: tanween details

[Abdulhaq Lynch <al-arabeyes at alinsyria dot fsnet dot co dot uk>]

On Saturday 25 June 2005 11:45, Thomas Milo wrote:
>
> It aims to encode plain text, whatever that means. In the case of Arabic, I
> take that to mean "graphemic". This is a kind of "semantic" but limited to
> abstract units writing: probably what Mete calls scriptic. The reason I
> think this is in line with the Unicode approach for Arabic is that Unicode
> rejected the idea of encoding contextual variants or ligatures (the
> ligature block is their for legacy compatibility only).
>
> The term graphemic is coined after Prague School Phonology: like the
> hierarchy archiphonemes - phonemes - allophones in a sound system, a
> writing system has archigraphemes - graphemes - allographs.
>
> archigrapheme = abstract: the common element(s) between two or more
> graphemes
> grapheme = astract: the minimal distinctive unit of writing / conrete: all
> allographs needed for the contextual representation of the same letter
> allograph = concrete: rule-based, predictable visual instance or variation
> of a grapheme / part of a ligature representing a grapheme
>
> Unicode should record only record graphemes and archigraphemes. Allographs
> fall in te domain of font technology.
>


Thanks for the info - when I get time I'll try to read a book about the 
subject.

wassalaam