Re: recent Quran proposal/discussion

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

Salaam Nadim,

> Can we pursue a 2-pronged approach,
> 
>  1. Patch the current technology using today's
> existing framework
>     (ie. the sub-optimal definitions and character
> sets) by adding
>     the proposed characters.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), with Unicode there is
no "short-term" solution to encoding problems. Once a
proposal to add new characters is presented to the
Unicode community, it may take more than a year before
it is actually added to the Unicode standard (this is
due to numerous long discussions that have to take
place on the bidi at unicode dot org mailing list, and then
it also has to pass through the actual commitee that
will approve the character addition), and than more
time before the new character is adopted by the font
industry. So in reality, I don't believe that there
really is any "short-term" solution in terms of
Unicode - character addition and subsequent adoption
is a process that can take years. The one short-term
solution that I can see is to utilize the Unicode
"private use areas" to add the new proposed
characters. That can happen pretty quickly I believe.

> As noted, I view step-2 as a longterm solution but
> we continue to need
> the proposed characters (or subsets there-of and/or
> additional characters)
> based on existing technologies to at a minimum
> attempt to standardize on
> something until step-2 is adopted and is rolled out.

As said above the rolling out of step-1 and reaping
the benefits of this rollout is something that may
take multiple years in the first place.
 
> Does that sound reasonable ?  I realize step-1 might
> be loathed and/or
> viewed as a waste of time and effort, but for a
> interim solution it seems
> like a plausible short-term answer.

If you wish you can post the new characters in the
Unicode private use areas and that would be an interim
solution.

But before you add those characters to the private use
area, please consider that many of those character
additions may not be even necessary in the first
place. And hopefully we will continue discussing this
on this Quran proposal discussion thread.

Best Regards,
Mete