Re: Is X lam-alef key OK?; technical detail

[pflm52td at w6 dot dion dot ne dot jp]

I have omitted techincal detail of the story, but it was confusing.
Let me explain now.
You are free to skip it if you are not interested.

The key is, Arabic letters defined in Unicode are two-fold.

Lam-alef, bound to key "b" belongs to the Unicode presentation block B.
Imagine, it is like a piece of metal type of "isolated lam-alef", 
picked up as an element of printing press.
Components of this category are to appear on your PC screen, or
to be printed on paper.

Allocated to other keys are those in the Unicode Arabic (basic) block.
# I'm not sure. Anyway, near to it, if not exact.
These are actual letters, building blocks of the language itself.

When you write a web page, the file consists of the basic block elements.
(step 1) It does not contain any information which shape each
letter takes; it can be worked out where they stand, and the software lays out
types in the pr. block B (step 2) to make it readable.

Short review: alef in the basic block, numbered as U+0627, is a letter
alef, NOT an isolated FORM of alef. An isolated printable alef is in
the presentation block B, U+FE8D, and alef succeeding some other letter
is U+8EFE. Lam-alef on the key "b" is U+FEFB, an isolated one.

Now getting the point? Ok, let me hand you over the last piece of this
jigsaw puzzle.

X Window System does not allow a sequence of symbols to be bound to
a key. Only one symbol is possible. The architecture is now found
unsatisfactory, but it can not be changed easily. It would be a big, big
change.

So, several years ago, one (member of Arabeyes ?) decided to put 
lam-alef in the pr. block B to the key "b", conforming to the habit
of Arabic typewriters (or MS Arabic Windows? I'm Japanese, not sure.)

It's an ad hoc workaround hack. When katoob receives it, it decomposes
INTERNALLY into separate letters lam and alef, and stores so in the file.
Katoob re-synthesizes them into combined lam-alef, and displays it.
(By the way, I'm often admired by the beautiful scripts correctly put
together by katoob. Fonts lateef and scheherazade provided by SIL
www.sil.org are excelent.)

But mozilla / firefox, which Arabeyes members seem to take part in,
was originally written mainly by non-Arabs. They are only Unicode-aware,
not of the above workaround. For example, when I type in firefox-1.0.6
(the latest of the stable release), "as-salaam", seen and lam-alef 
do not appear combined. 
What is worse is that it is not even letters of lam and alef in Arabic
language, but just a piece of metal type!

So, any application without a magic touch of Arabeyes, cannot handle
desirably "lam-alef" on key "b". It can't be helped. It does not
conform to the Unicode standard.

That's all for the story of lam-alef key.


> Please write your name and family name! That's very important for us!
I'm very sorry, but please allow me to go under an alias, or perhaps
a coined false full name.
In Japan, and probably in other country, personal information, like your
name, address, job, is a piece of merchandise. They say it is about half
a dollar per person, but the price would be higher if there hobby or
purchase history is included, and shots up to ten thousand with the credit
card number. Mafias ("booryokudan" in Japanese) specialized to collecting
info, selling, buying, and doing frauds exist. They are internatinal.
If you live in the region without such criminals, you're still happy.
But maybe not tomorrow. :(