Re: Tanween variants and Unicode

["Mete Kural" <metek at touchtonecorp dot com>]

Hello Meor,

Please find my comments below.

>From: Meor Ridzuan Meor Yahaya <meor dot ridzuan at gmail dot com>

>> - The contexual variant of superscript alef that shifts position when preceded by a fatha needs to be clarified. There is no need for a new character code here, just an explanation that the current superscript alef does shift position when preceded by a fatha.
>
>At first, I did not understand this issues stressed by M Yousif
>(original project maintainer). He insist on a new code point for the
>small alef used in the Madinah Mushaf. In my opinion , there are at
>least 3 problems if we don't introduce new codepoint:
>1. At least there is one occurance of standalone small alef in the
>Mushaf. According to unicode, this type of character is a spacing
>character (that's why I encode it with a space+superscript alef), thus
>have a different property than the superscript alef.
>2. The small alef does not just shift position, it does occupy some
>space as well. Of course, the rendering engine can insert a tatweel
>for that, but I think it will complicate things even more (even for
>basic arabic feature, many rendering engine have problems to render it
>properly)
>3. We will have problems to standardize a searching algorithm. In
>madinah mushaf, there is no superscript alef as used by other Mushaf.
>The alef always represent a missing alef. The superscript alef, on the
>other hand as used by Pakistan Mushaf, always denote a mad. So, for
>searching, we can always neglect a superscipt alef to search a word,
>but for madinah style, we need to convert the small alef to an
>ordinary alef (if preceded by fatha), or substitude the character
>before the small alef with alef (without fatha).  The problem is, a
>program like Miscrosoft Word, it will never know how the text is
>written: Madinah style, Pakistan style ot other style, thus by itself
>it cannot differentiate . If we have a seperate codepoint for the 2,
>we will not have this problem. We can develop a consistent searching
>algorithm for all application.
>
>Maybe we can discuss this matter more.

Yes this may deserve more discussion. If you can send me some scans from the Pakistani mushaf of the verses that you think will have a problem with the superscript alef that would be great. I do not have a copy of this Pakistani mushaf you're mentioning.

Also can you tell me which aya has the standalone small alef?

>There are also some other glyph missing: the superscript waw is one of
>them that I can think of right now.

OK I think I forgot about this one. Can you remind me which verse had this superscript waw?

>> - Tanween ending in meem: fathatan+superscript meem will trigger the "tamweem" symbol, and so forth for kasratan+superscript meem and dammatan+superscript meem. No new character code is needed, just a protocol that explains that the combination will trigger the corresponding glyph.
>
>I think this is ok, but we might encounter some implementation problems.

You mean implementation problems in regards to rendering engine providers not supporting this feature. Well, once this is in the Unicode standard, then you can start bugging Microsoft and others to fix their rendering engine to support this since at that time it would be considered a bug for them to not support it. And until they fix it, a workaround could be used.

>> - Silent/sequential tanween: fathatan+sukuun code will trigger the silent tanween/sequential tanween glyph, and so forth for kasratan+sukuun and dammatan+sukuun. Sukuun is a good choice for a codepoint here since the noon sound of the tanween is in a way silenced. No new character code is needed, just a protocol that explains that the combination will trigger the corresponding glyph.
>> 
>
>I think I need to check on this. I'm not sure if sukun would be the
>best choice. I still think a new code point will be better.

Sukun sounds like a good choice to me. But an alternative is the 06E0 Arabic Small High Upright Recktengular Zero. This character is used sometimes in the Medinah Mushaf on top of the silent alefs at the end of words like qaaloo. This could possibly even be a better choice than sukuun. But in any case a new codepoint is really not needed. When we have sukuun and 06E0 we don't really need a new codepoint for this function.

I look forward to you the aya numbers and Pakistani scans if possible.

Thank you,
Mete

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Mete Kural
Touchtone Corporation
714-755-2810
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