RE: Final letters in Hebrew and Arabic

From: Jonathan Rosenne (rosenne@qsm.co.il)
Date: Sat Mar 10 2001 - 15:33:36 EST


Regarding Hebrew:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick NICHOLAS [mailto:nicholas@uci.edu]
> Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 10:12 PM
> To: Unicode List
> Cc: Nick NICHOLAS
> Subject: Final letters in Hebrew and Arabic
>
>
>
> Many thanks to all who responded on the Albanian alphabet. No script too
> obscure, eh? :-) Kudos!
>
> With regard to the recent discussion on Greek final sigmas, I have a
> couple of questions on the final forms of letters in Hebrew and Arabic,
> just for the sake of comparison.
>
> (1) When a letter with a final variant appears alone --- say as a numeral,
> or in discussion of the letter or phoneme --- does it under any
> circumstances appear in its final form, or is it always medial?

It could be any, it is up to the author to decide what he wants.

>
> (2) Do diacritics --- vowel points, cantillations, extra dots on Arabic
> letters, whatever --- ever make a final form medial?

No, from a typographical point of view, they apply to both forms.

Please note that in Unicode automatic shape determination does not apply to
Hebrew.

>
> Instances from any typographical practice, not just the current
> mainstream, are welcome.
>
> --
> Nick Nicholas. TLG, UCI, USA. nicholas@uci.edu; www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis
> Many among their proselytes had sold their lands and houses to increase
> the public riches of the sect --- at the expense, indeed, of their
> unfortunate children, who found themselves beggars because their
> parents had been saints. (Edward Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_.)
>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:20 EDT