Re: Proposal for the Basis of a Codepoint Extension toUnicodefortheEncoding of the Quranic Manuscripts

[Abdulhaq Lynch <al-arabeyes at alinsyria dot fsnet dot co dot uk>]

On Wednesday 22 June 2005 14:52, Thomas Milo wrote:
> Abdulhaq Lynch wrote:
> > I bring it up (and I stress, not in reaction to anyone or anything
> > particular in this list) because of how awful the orientalist version
> > of arabic grammar is, and I don't want anything similar to happen
> > here.
>
> What do you think of AFL Beeston's approach?

I haven't seen it but I'll look out for it,

>
> > The scriptural representation of the quran that we have now is a
> > direct representation of the rules of tajweed and these signs are
> > there as an aid to the reader to perform idghaam, iqlaab, ikhfaa,
> > madd, waqf etc. If we encode theses things as a small meem or a
> > phototastic quadrilateral lingo squirly then we've missed the whole
> > point and are putting a millstone around the neck of those who have
> > to use it.
>
> Encodings are abstractions that no user needs to be aware of.
>
> BTW, what is phototastic quadrilateral lingo?
>

a photatastic quadrilateral lingo _squirly_ is when the tongue does a 
loop-the-loop that is clearly visible from all four directions. Surely you 
knew that!

I agree the user doesn't need to know the encoding, but technology workers do. 
As PCs become affordable in the muslim world more and more people (system 
designers etc) will be interested in this type of work. Referring to these 
glyphs as intended by their inventors will make it easy for them to extend 
our work rather than start from scratch because of alien terminology that 
probably doesn't quite apply 100%.

wassalaam
abdulhaq