From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
Date: Wed Aug 30 2006 - 12:52:16 CDT
Andries Brouwer wrote:
> If one is forced to use for Uyghur H a code point that already exists,
> I can see that U+06BE, introduced for Urdu, is the best choice.
> But that is a hack. It is wrong, but the best one can do
> with today's standard.
> The reason that I call it wrong is that Uyghur shaping is well-defined,
> while Urdu in the most common font shape uses only a single form,
> and manuscripts and fonts that use two shapes vary in usage.
No, I still disagree with this. The reason you can say that the Uighur shaping for h is
well defined as being two forms is that you have only seen Uighur written in a naskh or
neo-naskh style of type. If you'd seen Uighur written in the nasta'liq style you would not
say this, because in that style it would be expected to follow the norms of that style,
i.e. repetition of a single form for h as seen in Urdu written in that style.
This is my point: the normative shaping is not language-specific but style-specific. In
the naskh style, the character encoded as U+06BE has two forms. In the nasta'liq style it
has one form.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC john@tiro.ca I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. - Samuel Johnson
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