Re: Question about small noon

["Thomas Milo" <t dot milo at chello dot nl>]

Meor Ridzuan Meor Yahaya wrote:
> Tom,
> Good to hear from you. I remember that you are the one mentioning that
> the small/superscript noon have only one occurance in arabic history,
> or something like that. Am I right?
>  Anyway, it is true that Indian/Pakistan tradition uses a small noon
> to denote the noon sound for tanween followed by sukun/shadda.
> However, it is small noon, not really superscript noon.

It's feasibly that it can serve in both instances, just like the
trailing/superscript retroflex yeh.

> Ok, a very short list from me:
> 1. The assimilated tanween. We need to finalize this, whether a new
> code point will be added or some other encoding will be used.
> 2. Good old hamza, especially the one over tatweel and lam alef.
> 3. The superscript waw (the one occurance)

Tatweel is not a grapheme. I have come to the conclusion, that the letter
shaping mechanism needs a new catagory: amphibuous (literally "between
both", between skeleton and vowel as a category, as well as placed between
two surrounding letters - with optional and separately encoded tatweel. This
idea handles the problems with hamza U+0621, superscript alef,
trailing/superscript retroflex and possibly even the superscript waw. Think
of it, if you will.

> The not so pressing issues:
> 1. Spacing small alef and yeh (waw and hamza goes to above category)

Mechanically I consider all of them amphibious.

> 2. Alef maksura, yeh, farsi yeh etc. The definition in 4.1 for 649 is
> dotless yeh in any position (although the name remains as alef
> maksura). So, what does this means? In the same document, they said
> that 64A (yeh) + 654(hamza above) = 626 . This , to me somehow does
> not really goes together.

Here's a real legacy of earlier Arabic, for which dots were as optional as
vowels. The fact that they are now encoded as part of the rasm makes it a
permament problem, I am afraid. Unless canonic equivalence is accepted for
[modern letter] = [rasm + points/stripes].

> I'll add more if I find.
>
> One quick question to you, why is the 6C1 looks like it's final form?
> is the isolated form really looks like in the document? I personally
> have no idea how it looks like.


This so-called Heh Goal is a legacy blunder. This descending  final shape is
caused by the use of nastaliq script, not by the logic of the grapheme.
Regular heh plus nastaliq would have yielded the same result. Moreover, the
language that requires it, Urdu, accepts regular heh when it is the
consequnec of use another calligraphic style, such as naskh.

Cheers,

t



> On 3/1/06, Thomas Milo <t dot milo at chello dot nl> wrote:
>> As far as I know, it is added to unicode for one single instance in
>> the Qur'an. BTW, I will attend the Unicode Connference next week as
>> well as talk there (google: IUC29 milo). Could you guys produce a
>> short list of pressing issues?
>>
>> t
>>
>>
>> Meor Ridzuan Meor Yahaya wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> I have a question about the small noon, ie unicode 6E8 . Unicode
>>> define it as a mark. My question is, how is this being used? Is
>>> there any other use it it besides Qurnic Mushaf?
>>>
>>> In Madinah Mushaf, there is only one occurance of it. However, in
>>> Indian/Pakistan traditon, it is not being used the same way.
>>> However, what they have is a  small noon, isolated, to represent
>>> the missing noon in pronunciation (the tajweed rule, tanween
>>> followed by a sukun/shadda). How about in other tradition?
>>>
>>> I'm asking this because I'm thinking of using it for different
>>> purpose in encoding, which might be usefull.
>>>
>>> One more thing, last time I post about my font. No one have a bug
>>> report/comments/feature request?
>>>
>>> Regards.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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