Re: Unicode Quranic Glyphs Proposal

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

First, thank you for triggering this important, long-awaited proposal.

-If the introduction points more clearly that it's 'a severe 
shortage'/'important milestone' (depends in your temper) in the development 
of Unicode itself not to/to accurately represent Koran, it won't be bad ;)

Typos and improvements:
s/encoding/encode (in conclusion)
s/this issue is specified/these issues are resolved
s/that/, (comma) (in conclusion)
s/rending/rendering (in conclusion)
s/Quran/Qur'an or Koran
-The $ dollar sign in front of the hex values is better to be removed, we are 
not programming now ;) If necessary use U+

NOW, more serious:
-According to the "Requirements of Proposal Form"
It's not enough to say: "Although the glyphs _might_ look similar in nature to 
others that already exist, ... they are extremely different in nature ..."
the context within which the proposed characters are used especially for these 
sporadic additions, should clarify clearly what similarities or relationships 
the proposed characters bear to existing characters already encoded in the 
standard.

>> - For Glyph 8, certainly the isolated/initial form for Lam Alef
It could be isolated, initial or medial, do we need to submit a requirement 
for three ligatures, e.g. In Al-Baqarah verse 8 الآخر is medial where as your 
example is initial
And since it's a ligature, I suggest the names
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

but we need to discuss whether it's better to say FLOATING, IN BETWEEN, IN THE 
MIDDLE as alternatives.

>>   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.

> OK, so the isolated/initial form is needed no question there.
yes, but some answers are needed too ;)

>>  But about the final form, I haven't been able to find a sample
> Can this point be confirmed ?  Can others note otherwise ?  Should
> we exclude this as a requirement ?
I can't imagine it also. So better exclude it until some one prove it. After 
all you can't ask for it without a proof.
In Unicode 4.0
FEFA ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF WITH HAMZA BELOW FINAL FORM
Q: Is this available in Arabic or is it another 'syrically' language?

It's already there:
0305 COMBINING OVERLINE (=overscore) (connects on left and right) (it's used 
in Japanese) (used to be called non-spacing overscore)
<off topic>I used to hear that in Arabic we should use overscore instead of 
underscore to stress something</off topic>

In Unicode 4.0
0652	ARABIC SUKUN
	* marks absence of a vowel after the base consonant
	* used in some Korans to mark a long vowel as ignored
Q: The first item is correct but the second seems to be an errata, isn't it?

In Unicode 4.0
06E1	ARABIC SMALL HIGH DOTLESS HEAD OF KHAH
	= Arabic jazm
	* used in some Korans (Qur'ans) to mark absence of a vowel
Q: I used to think this is a font issue and should not be a separate character 
in Unicode. 0652 and 06E1 are just two ways of representing the same 
character, and we shouldn't use both in the same text, wrong?

Why do we have:
U+FE76 ARABIC FATHA ISOLATED FORM
U+FE77 ARABIC FATHA MEDIAL FORM?
and hence do we need to apply for two codepoints per letter/glyph/ligature
e.g
ARABIC SEQUENTIAL FATHATAN ISOLATED FORM
ARABIC SEQUENTIAL FATHATAN MEDIAL FORM

Finally, all these issues are available in HAFS reading. I have no clue at all 
about other readings like WARSH, QUALOON, ... Can any one points whether 
other issues need to be resolved?

-- 
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