From: Mark Davis (mark.davis@jtcsv.com)
Date: Wed Aug 13 2003 - 18:02:26 EDT
The effect of <X, holam, ZWNJ, vav> would normally be to visually
display (from RTL) X + holam, then vav. The ZWNJ would be ignored in
most processing, although it could be tailored to make a difference in
string comparison and searching (see UTS #10).
It may be that that is what is desired in this case; I have not had
time to follow the discussion in this area. I will mention the other
cases of the use of ZWNJ, ZWJ with combining marks.
ZWJ and ZWNJ are generally used with indic
(http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch09.pdf, p223) after
any combining marks, i.e., they do not normally come between a
combining mark and its base. That would be parallel to this usage.
Contrast that with use of a format character *between* a base and a
combining mark, which as pointed out on other instances, is in general
a bad idea. It breaks a combining sequence into two, which has
ramifications for everything that parses combining sequences.
Now, there may be circumstances where breaking a sequence is exactly
what is desired; where the combining mark really is *not* intended to
be graphically placed on the base. One example is the proposal in
http://www.unicode.org/review/pr-9.pdf. In this case, the purpose of
the ZWNJ is explicitly to separate the combining mark (halant) from
the base. The halant is freed up to ligate with the following mark.
This is an appropriate usage because of the ligaturing effects between
halant and specific following characters in Indic. Prima facie, that
would not be appropriate for scripts where these sorts of complex
ligations do not occur.
Mark
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----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
To: "Peter Kirk" <peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com>
Cc: <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 13:21
Subject: Re: [hebrew] Re: Consensus, draft 2
> Peter Kirk scripsit:
>
> > My preferred version of this is <holam, ZWNJ, vav>. This would not
so
> > much force the holam to attach anywhere as prevent it from forming
holam
> > male.
>
> I have no objections, but the use of a format character rather than
an
> invisible combining character may create problems for font
designers,
> so I'll defer to John Hudson on this point.
>
> > And exactly the same with <holam, alef> sequences.
>
> Indeed.
>
> --
> "They tried to pierce your heart John Cowan
> with a Morgul-knife that remains in the
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> wound. If they had succeeded, you would
http://www.reutershealth.com
> become a wraith under the domination of the Dark
--Gandalf
>
>
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