Re: Quranic Proposal

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

OK. Sounds good.

After carefully reading your document, my conclusion is the following.

The document enumerates problematic elements of text (characters) and
elements of script (glyphs). For instance, the special cases of tanween fall
in the domain of character encoding, whereas special positioning of
superscript alif as well as trailing alifs falls in the domain of script
rendering or font technology.

All the characters you request are already available in the Unicode
Standard, be it in a different form in some cases.

This doesn't mean that we should stop this operation. The problem with
Unicode and Qur'anic script is not the character repertoire, but the
instructions for their use. Without such guide lines, Unicode cannot
function as a standard.

A good example is the confusion regarding various sukun-like signs. They
were requested, rejected or cross-assigned, while, all the time, they were
already part of the standard, but nobody was aware of it because their
shapes in the printed edition of the Unicode Standard are wrong. I am
presently in the process of straightening out this detail - something the
present proposal doesn't yet mention.

It seems to me that the sajda line needs to be taken care of by mark up
similar to underscores in Latin script.

All in all, my suggestion is to produce a joint document that prescribes how
to encode Qur'anic text in a uniform way using a combination of Unicode
characters, well-designed fonts and adequate font technology as well as
standard mark-up (i.e., XML).

t

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nadim Shaikli" <shaikli at yahoo dot com>
To: "General Arabization Discussion" <general at arabeyes dot org>
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 4:05 PM
Subject: Re: Quranic Proposal


> --- Thomas Milo <t dot milo at chello dot nl> wrote:
> > > Sure we understand that and that's preciously why we wanted to make
sure
> > > the proposal's content and reasoning was stated clearly using
"unicode"
> > > terms and nomenclature.
> >
> > How about rewriting it together and making it a joint proposal to the
> > Unicode consortium. I have already a lot of work invested in the same
> > subject and solved most of the Unicode problems that you mention.
>
> Sure, I see no problem in that at all (I actually think it will make the
> proposal stronger and more complete with multiple minds working on it).
> I do want to continue maintaining the doc though, so once things are
> agreed-upon and text is drafted and/or modified - simply mail me (or
> this list) the new content for me to collect it all and re-present it
> in a new document.
>
> PS: I can't speak for Mohammed.Yousif, but I've known him to be a very
>     reasonable proactive results-oriented person (ie. don't expect any
>     contrary opinion to what's stated here).
>
> Regards,
>
>  - Nadim
>
>
>
>
>
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