Re: Question about small noon

["Meor Ridzuan Meor Yahaya" <meor dot ridzuan at gmail dot com>]

Tom,

So, basically we can categorize the problems into only 2: the
amphibuous characters, and the assimilated tanween. You did not say
anything about it. What is your proposal about it? If i can recall
correctly, you were suggesting to treat the sequence fatha+fatha to be
equal to the assimilated fathatain, am I right? Is this still your
stand? Personally, I would like a new code point for it.
About the amphibuous characters, I think it is not that straight
forward to support it. Of course, if Microsoft says that they have no
problem supporting it, then there will be no problem. I think , the
closest thing to amphibuous currently available in Unicode is the
behaviour of Marks. Marks does not change the shaping behaviour of
other characters. However, this is not exactly what's needed, because
marks, by current practice, should not be standalone. However, the
characters that we are trying to address can. So, what I'm trying to
convey is, we need to be very careful to define the behaviour of the
character.Also, we might need some proposal on how to tackle the
spacing problem (as compared to marks, which has no space).

The heh goal, so basically you are saying that it should not be there,
right? So, is there any needs for me to include it in my font?

Regards.

On 3/1/06, Thomas Milo <t dot milo at chello dot nl> wrote:
> 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,
>