Re: Question about small noon

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

Hi Meor,

Meor Ridzuan Meor Yahaya wrote:
> So, basically we can categorize the problems into only 2: the
> amphibious 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.

Under the influence of your - earlier - approach I changed my position,
already a while ago, in concurrence with Mete Kural. To preserve textual
integrity and interchangeability with less elaborately spelled Qur'ans, I
propose to maintain tanween in all positions, and instead to treat the added
precision of the tajweed as mark-up. This doesn't have to be mark-up
expressed by a separate layer but simply using existing code points more or
less as intended. Vowel-plus-small_meem could be expressed by
tanween-plus-small_meem. The off-set fathatan (as well as off-set kasratan
and repeated dhamma's) could be expressed by tanween-plus-sukuun. This
solution would allows for the more logical treatment of repeated vowel mark
as equal to the imho fictitious - tanween character. After all, the tanween
marks as separate Unicode characters can be traced to a typographical
ligature of reduplicated vowel marks.

> About the amphibious characters, I think it is not that straight
> forward to support it.

It can be done. Better still, it SHOULD be done.

> Of course, if Microsoft says that they have no
> problem supporting it, then there will be no problem.

Microsoft? My foot. We are building it for Adobe CS2. That'll show them the
way: they copy right and left.

> I think , the
> closest thing to amphibious currently available in Unicode is the
> behaviour of Marks. Marks does not change the shaping behaviour of
> other characters.

Amphibious characters are close both to marks and to base characters. Marks
float above or below a base character; base characters carry vowels that
float above or below. Amphibious characters float BETWEEN characters and can
carry their own vowels. That's why the are amphibious. Think of the famous
example of /waliyiiya/, where one /y/ is written with superscript retroflex
yeh - with its own kasra!

If you hesitate to use this concept, you can hack a typographical solution
by placing substitute mark characters above or below a tatweel bar. This
will of course destroy the integrity of the encoding, because it then
consists of a mix of context sensitive and context insensitive characters.
Moreover, the problem with tatweel bars is, that even in computer fonts they
are only acceptable between connecting characters. To simulate amphibious
characters in this manner, you would need a non-printing tatweel allograph
following disconnecting letters like waw, dal, etc. in order to get the
positioning right for hamza, superscript alif, etc. When dealing with
sophisticated (or simply "well-designed") and calligraphic script, one soon
discovers that the concept of tatweel bar to space such a
superscript/subscript character is not compatible with the use of
ligatures - worst of all, of course, it doesn't work with lam-alef in any
font (except yours and mine).

> 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 "standalone" spacing behaviour in my view - and in addition to the
printed images from Jeddah and Cairo I include observations from manuscript
practice - is that amphibious characters are roughly positioned on the
middle of a line drawn between (amphi-) the two (-bi) characters surrounding
it. Whether these surrounding characters are spaced by a keshide is
irrelevant in manuscript practice.

> 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?

Not needed for Arabic. If you want to support Urdu, you could substitute a
regular Heh to cut corners - or build a proper Nastaliq. Alternatively, you
could design the necessary amount of hybrid nastaliq behaviour into your
Nask-derived font, as suggested by the Unicode standard.

Cheers,

t


>
> 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 occurrence 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 feasible 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: amphibious (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,
>>
>
>
>
>
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