Re: Unicode Quranic Glyphs Proposal

[Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at newhorizons dot com dot sa>]

On Thursday 01 April 2004 10:13 am, Mohammed Yousif wrote:
> On Tuesday 30 March 2004 02:35, Munzir Taha wrote:

> > ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE FLOATING ISOLATED FORM
> > ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE FLOATING INITIAL FORM
> > ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE FLOATING MEDIAL FORM
>
>   so, what's the difference between all of those, I really tend to say that
>   they are the same glyph.

Unicode tends (for good reasons) to name LIGATURES/glyphs according to their 
position in the word and give each one a distinct codepoint _even_ if they 
look the same.

Ex:
FEF7	ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE ISOLATED FORM
	# <isolated> 0644 0623
FEF8	ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE FINAL FORM
	# <final> 0644 0623

Also,
FEC1	ARABIC LETTER TAH ISOLATED FORM
	# <isolated> 0637
FEC2	ARABIC LETTER TAH FINAL FORM
	# <final> 0637
FEC3	ARABIC LETTER TAH INITIAL FORM
	# <initial> 0637
FEC4	ARABIC LETTER TAH MEDIAL FORM
	# <medial> 0637
If you can understand why they made it into for distinct letters, it will be 
easy to understand the suggested name.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert in Unicode, I just tried to contribute to this 
great work by taking a look of their naming scheme for the available similar 
glyphs. We _do_ need someone else (maybe Roozbah, Behdad, nadim,... ) to 
enlighten it more.


> > but we need to discuss whether it's better to say FLOATING, IN BETWEEN,
> > IN THE MIDDLE as alternatives.
>
>   I think floating is more descriptive.

What do you think about
ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF WITH MIDDLE HAMZA ABOVE

It's similar to many apporved letters like
013F	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE DOT
019F	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH MIDDLE TILDE
09F0	BENGALI LETTER RA WITH MIDDLE DIAGONAL

Have you seen any reference to this FLOATING in Unicode naming convention. We 
need to be consistent, right?


> > >>   with floating hamza is required (it's pronounced like Lam Alef
> > >>  with Madda above but tends to be shorter in pronouncation).
> >
> > not necessarily shorter but it's out of topic.
>
>   hmm, I'm interested to know the place where it exists but is not short,
>   please send me privately some samples.
No, it's always short but not necessarily shorter than Madda. It's 2 harakat 
where as Madda, could also be 2 harakat or more. (Not a fatwa ;) )

>   Does it really behave like the sajda line? (i.e. following the behaviors
> I explained)

You decide. This is my 2 cents.

>   I agree with you here, but there are some justification for this
>   redundanct. Let's say you need to make a document that
>   quotes some Qur'anic text, with the current state, you could use the
>   regular 0652 for the document and use 06E1 for only the Qur'anic
>   text, if they were the same character, we wouldn't be able to do
>   that.

I got your point. You are right.


Finally,
Regarding the first requested letter
U+065F Arabic High Rectangular Zero
How this differs from
U+06E0 Arabic Small High Upright Rectangular Zero?

-- 
  __/    __/          _/  _/  _/
 _/ _\  _/ _\            _/
_/    \ /   _\ unzir    _/ aha  PGP Key available
gpg --recv-keys --keyserver www.mandrakesecure.net F0671821

Telecommunications and Electronics Engineer
Linux Registered User #279362 at http://counter.li.org
Mandrake Club member
Maintainer of Mandrake Arabization Project Status
http://www.arabeyes.org/download/documents/distro/mdkarabicsupport.html
CIW Designer, ICDL, MOUS
New Horizons CLC
Riyadh, SA