Re: Tanween variants and Unicode

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Mete Kural <metek at touchtonecorp dot com> wrote:
> Tom is gonna present to the Unicode people in next months's Unicode
> conference in Florida God willing so I wanted to make sure that the list
> of missing Madina Mushaf Quranic features in Unicode is complete.
> 
> So can you think of anything else than the below list that is not
> supported in Unicode:
> 
> New character codes that are needed:
> ------------------------------------
> 
> - A new Arabic letter hamza is needed. This hamza will not be dis-joining
> like the current hamza 0621. When put between two joining letters it will
> not split them but float on top of them.

I again highly suggest/encourage that everyone look into the document
that M.Yousif had put together awhile back to note what is needed and
what is missing.

  http://arabeyes.org/~nadim/tmp/qu_prop.pdf

it was later formalized into the following document that wasn't
submitted,

  http://arabeyes.org/~nadim/tmp/unicode_quran_prop.pdf

At a min look into the 'qu_prop.pdf' document for brevity.

> New Protocols that are needed:
> ------------------------------
> 
> - 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.
> - 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.
> - 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. 
> 
> New canonical equivalences (this one is not absolutely needed for the
> Madinah Mushaf):
> ----------------------
> - Basic tanween canonical equivalence: fatha+fatha needs to be made
> canonically equivalent to fathatan, and so on for kasratan and dammatan.

You can do whatever substitution you like and/or even spec those out if
you so desire, but at a minimum (and humor me here) the new scripts need
their own codepoint (like for sequential fathatan, etc).  We need this
so that other font technologies (now and in the future) will be able to
reference them __in a consistent manner__.  We, after all, want to make
sure that the same text if explicitly written (if one opted not to
substitute for instance) would work across platforms and fonts.  Let's
not be restrictive here and have follow in the same spirit of what is
there now.

BTW: Mete, do please cite only relevant parts in your replies and don't
     simply include the originating email in its entirety (the archives
     are there for those looking to see the entire thing anyway).

Salam.

 - Nadim



		
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