From: Cary Karp (ck@nic.museum)
Date: Sat Nov 19 2005 - 10:47:29 CST
There's more to the use of Hebrew script in IDN than GERESH or
GERSHAYIM :-)
With specific regard to Yiddish--
The Yiddish digraphs 'tsvey vovn', 'vov yud', and 'tsvey yudn', can
be entered in two different ways from a Hebrew keyboard. If there
are single keys for each of them, it is likely that they will
produce the ligatures HEBREW LIGATURE YIDDISH DOUBLE VAV (U+05F0),
HEBREW LIGATURE YIDDISH VAV YOD (U+05F1), and HEBREW LIGATURE
YIDDISH DOUBLE YOD (U+05F2). Even when this option is available,
some users may enter them as two key combinations, giving HEBREW
LETTER VAV - HEBREW LETTER VAV (U+05D5 U+05D5), HEBREW LETTER VAV -
HEBREW LETTER YOD (U+05D5 U+05D9), and HEBREW LETTER YOD - HEBREW
LETTER YOD (U+05D9 U+05D9). It is not apparent that the one form is
used preferentially to the other, and no attempt at normalizing them
has yet been made.
However, in an application such as IDN where a string entered from a
keyboard needs to be matched exactly with a stored string, and the
keyboarded string may be represented in different ways, the
application will obviously need to accommodate all alternative input
forms. If the registry also contains the corresponding multiple
representations, the intended result at the user end will be
ensured.
There are also good reasons for preferring the stored form to be
unique. At least on first consideration, it would seem to make sense
for the canonical form to be the one most frequently encountered in
keyboarding practice. Does anyone on this list know if these three
digraphs are more frequently entered as single characters, or as two
characters combinations? What would the likely behavior be if it
were not clear to the user whether the string to be entered was in
Yiddish or in Hebrew?
Just in case I'm about to be told that both options are not
regularly available on stock Hebrew keyboards, they are in fact
supported in all Yiddish keyboard drivers. One popular source is
http://www.shoshke.net/uyip/keyboards.htm, and the drivers there may
also be of relevance to the consideration of GERESH and GERSHAYIM.
(Apologies to anyone who saw me post the same basic questions to the
UYIP list. They were not answered there, which is why I'm hoping to
continue the discussion here.)
/Cary
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