Re: Question about small noon

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

To be more precise;

Amphibious characters are positioned on the middle of a line drawn between
_the vowel positions_ of the two characters surrounding it.

t

Thomas Milo wrote:
>> 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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