Re: recent Quran proposal/discussion

[Mohammed Yousif <mhdyousif at gmx dot net>]

On أحد 13 يونيو 2004 06:48, Mete Kural wrote:
> 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
 
  Even if it's a year or two it is still short term compared to the two
  decades you mentioned that the work on (2) took/is taking.
  Once Unicode adds these characters, any existing font can be
  modified to adopt them in less than a day.

>
> 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. 

 Let me state it like this:
   The whole range of unicode characters are not necessary, one can
   make an engine to draw all of them on the fly. But would it be the best
   way?
   Actually Nadim talked to me about implementing something like that for
   the Qur'an and I liked the idea but I postponed it for some time.
   But I don't think it's about "necessary" or "not necessary", it's  rather
   about "logical" and "illlogical".
   It's logical to have all types of tanween available, it's illogical to have
   only three and forget about the rest "because they can be implemented
   using the above technique".
   It's illogical to see the small madd letter yeh on both of its forms but in
   the same time only one form of the small madd letter alef.

-- 
Mohammed Yousif
Egypt