Hamza, Unicode, Java

[Robert Kosara <robert at kosara dot net>]

Salaam!

  I just subscribed to this mailing list and hope that it is the right
one for my question. If not, please tell me a place where it would be more
appropriate.

  I'm studying Arabic (just started in October), and, being a computer
scientist, I want some help from my computer (CAA - Computer Aided Arabic
;). So I am writing a very simple program to help me learn the vocabulary
(which I hate doing) with a flash-card kind of system. I do this in Java
because of the Unicode support, and because I was able to produce Arabic
output with very little code.

  But my problem is this: I have a function that translates from a
transliteration (the one used in ArabTeX) to Unicode. It works quite well
for most things, but one thing that just doesn't work properly is the
hamza in combination with a letter. I tried both \u0621 and \u0654, but
the former produces an isolated hamza, and the second only shows me an
empty rectangle. And it's not even that Java creates a combined letter
(that I don't have the font for), because when I write bi'r, for
example, the ya is printed, and after it the rectangle ...
  And when I do the conversion myself (inserting a single \ufe8c), the ba
and ra are not connected to it ...

  Is there is some documentation somewhere on how the signs are combined
and how I can influence that? Because I would also like to be able to have
auxilliary vowels on demand, and for that I guess I need to know a little
more about how the things work together.


Regards,

Robert

***************************************************************************
Robert Kosara                      *   _
robert at kosara dot net                  *  /_)_  /  __ __ 7  //_  _ __ __ __
http://www.kosara.net/             * / \(_)/_)(- /  /  /\(_)_\(_//  (_/