Re: fribidi + joining/shaping

[Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh at sharif dot edu>]

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002, Munzir Taha wrote:

> I am still trying to do the homework ...
> 0649; ALEF MAKSURA; D; YEH
> 06CC; DOTLESS YEH; D; YEH
> I think this should be
> 0649; ALEF MAKSURA; R; YEH
> 06CC; DOTLESS YEH; R; YEH

1. The DOTLESS YEH thing is a Persian Yeh. It appears with dots in initial 
and medial forms, and without dots in final and isolated forms. The 
official Unicode name of the letter is ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH. It has for 
forms.

2. The Alef Maksura sometimes appears in initial and medial forms. The two 
standard examples are some verses of Koran where it is used in the middle 
of a word with a Superscript Alef over it, and the languages Uighur, 
Kazakh, and Kirghiz which use it. (Actually Unicode has the prsentation 
form of initial and medial Alef Maksura at U+FBE8 and U+FBE9. It would 
have been very weird if there was a way to encode it using the 
Presentation Forms but not normal Arabic.)

In short, Unicode is correct to mark them both as "D".

> I _was_ a member before. I subsribed to the mailing list to ask them how to 
> write an Arabic square root symol in whatever application in whatever 
> platform. I found this couldn't be done and a war exists between font and 
> applications desiners who should implement it. Then, unsubscribed sadly :-(

Debates happen very frequently on the list, specially when something
not-implemented-anywhere-yet is the subject. Please get on the list again
and help us fight the battle. And don't get frustrated so easily the next
time ;)

roozbeh