Re: Which type of mushaf ins Unicode encoding?

["Thomas Milo" <t dot milo at chello dot nl>]

Hi Abdallah,

Please forgive me - I need to sigh of for a week or so and concentrate on
another priority, a small conference in Cambridge.

After that I would like to pick this fruitful discussion were I had to drop
it.

Cheers,

t


A Lynch wrote:
> Thomas Milo wrote:
>
>> Now there was the authoritative source that claims there was
>> originally a single vowel followed by a small or big noon. I
>> consulted another authoritative source, Dr Gerd-R�diger Puin,
>> researcher into the history of Qur'anic orthography, and he
>> confirmed my observation that the oldest manuscripts express tanween
>> with two, horizontally aligned vowel signs. This is also how Yasin
>> Dutton describes them - no trace of a small noon, let alone a big
>> one. Yet, as a logical device, I like the elegance of the formula:
>
>> [vowel <a/u/i>]+[any tanween <regular/iqlaab/idgaam>
>> (as many as you can identify; these are the three expressed in the
>> Saudi orthography, AFAIK)
>
> I agree with that except that the iqlaab also applies to nuun saakin,
> and idghaam also
> applies to nuun saakin and various letter combinations such as laam +
> raa' (qul rabbii).
> Therefore they should not be considered as variations of tanween but
> as modifiers
> of tanween, nuun saakin and other letters.
>
> The other modifier is ikhfaa', which applies to tanween and nuun
> saakin. Ikhfaa' applies
> when nuun saakin precedes a letter which does not cause idghaam,
> iqlaab or idhhaar:
>
> Final Nuun Saakin or Tanween followed by y/r/m/l/w/n  يرماون  =>
> idghaam إدغام (assimilation)
> Any Nuun Saakin or Tanween followed by
> khaa'/`ayn/ghayn/hamza/Haa'/haa'    خ ع غ ء ح ه => idhhaar إظهار
> (make clear) Any Nuun Saakin or Tanween followed by baa' ب => iqlaab
> إقلاب (change nuun to meem)
> Any Nuun Saakin or Tanween followed by any other letter (seen, sheen,
> faa' etc) => ikhfaa' إخفاء ('hide' the nuun)
>
> In the saudi mushaf the ikhfaa causes the tanween to be staggered and
>  the nuun saakin loses its ra's alkhaa', take a look at:
>
> a) nuun followed by raa' (idghaam) => staggered tanween or nuun has
> no ra's alkhaa'
> b) nuun followed by khaa' (idhhaar) => regular tanween or nuun has
> ra's alkhaa'
> c) nuun followed by sheen (ikhfaa') => staggered tanween or nuun has
> no ra's alkhaa'
>
> So ikhfaa' looks similar to idghaam except that for idghaam with
> r/m/l/n there is a shadda
> on the following initial letter. In the maghribii & pakistani mushaf
> the idghaam has a shadda
> over all the idghaam letters y/r/m/l/w/n i.e. including waaw and yaa'
>
> The letter meem has similar rules and also the script changes in
> similiar ways.
> For instance with idghaam (meem saakin + initial meem) the meem loses
> it's ra's alkhaa'
> and the second meem has a shadda. With ikhfaa' of the meem (before a
> baa') the meem
> also loses its ra's alkhaa. With idhhaar (meem saakin followed by any
> letter other than
> baa' or meem) the meem keeps the ra's alkhaa.
>
> We end up with such as:
>
> <vowel><tanween><iqlaab> <space> <baa'>
>
> and for example:
>
> Anbi'hum bi asmaa'ihim =>
> <hamza qaT`><fatha><nuun><sukuun><iqlaab><baa'><kasra><hamza
> qaT`><sukuun><haa'>
> <Damma><meem><sukuun><ikhfaa'><space><baa'><kasra><space><hamza qaT`>
> etc
>
> The first <iqlaab> tells the renderer to display a small meem over
> the nuun and no sukuun.
> The <ikhfaa'> after the meem saakin tells the renderer not to display
> the sukuun over the meem.
>
>> This structure guarantees searching in existing Unicode-enabled
>> environments. It also guarantees that modern font technology can
>> take care of the shapes, whether Pakistani , Egyptian, Saudi or
>> North African. This approach would mean that on the level of plain
>> text code, Qur'ans remain identical when they do not conceptually
>> differ and it would make research into real differences much more
>> efficient.
>
> If you treat all the tajweed marks as modifiers and leave tanween as
> a single variant then
> all the tajweed marks can be treated as whitespace and all vowels are
> consistent whether
> in tanween or not. Perhaps it would also be nice to mark sukuuns
> wherever there is no vowel  and
> the renderer omits rendering it when required (over a nuun with
> idghaam or ikhfaa for instance).
>
>> A simple canonical equivalence insures legacy compatibility with
>> existing fathatan, dhammatan and kasratan.
>
> This is your field but it seems clear.
>
> Although I am sure this is how the quran should be encoded at a top
> level, I am not
> totally convinced that it applies at the unicode level. We need to be
> sure that any 'automation' of applying glyphs does not stand in the
> way of any unorthodox use that
> the user may require. I guess that this can be achieved by the user
> not using tajweed codes
> but the actual glyph itself. For instance, what if I just want to
> print a small meem by itself? Should
> I be allowed to do that and if so, how? Also, as Gregg says, this
> could all be hard to explain to
> a font encoder.
>
> wassalaam
> abdulhaq
>
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