From: arno (arno@zedat.fu-berlin.de)
Date: Wed Dec 19 2007 - 12:23:42 CST
There are still more than 50 Arabic chars needed for printing the most
important Arabic book (the qur'ân) that are not encoded in Unicode.
Before formulating an official proposal I want to ask you to comment on
my suggestions.
background
There are different orthographic traditions for writing the qur'ân:
-- Western traditionS (Libyan, Tunisian, Moroccan, Senegalese, Hausa)
-- Eastern traditionS (Ottoman, Persian, Indian)
-- Qahira1924: an orthography developed by Azharis after WWI and first
used in the King Fuad edition of 1924, since 1980 used mostly in the
copies distributed by Saudi Arabia.
Some editions mix the traditions: some Indonesian editions improve on
the old Indian orthography with signs borrowed from Qahira1924; in Iran
recently a mushaf was printed combining the old Persian orthography,
with Qahira1924 and some new ideas (three chars needed for this edition
have been added to Unicode).
Most of the chars missing are used in North African and Indo-Pakistani
editions, some in Turkish one.
But I want to start with the chars missing that are needed for
Qahira1924. Because Saudi Arabia offers a copy to every pilgrim and many
copies to any mosque that asks for them, this has became some sort of a
standard edition -- although most copies *bought* are in the
Indo-Pakistani orthography.
In Unicode we have three tanween chars
U+064B ARABIC FATHATAN -- for an --,
U+064C ARABIC DAMMATAN -- for un --,
U+064D ARABIC KASRATAN -- for in --,
but in Qahira24 orthography there are three times three tanween signs
needed.
Today I will just point out the need to do something about the
sequential tanween signs.
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~arno/seqTan.jpg shows that the three
sequential tanween signs are different from the normal signs and that
they are basically tanween signs. All examples are taken form pages 11
und 12 of a standard 604-page-copy: the first line from the new Medina
copy, the second from a new Iranian copy written according to the
Persian orthography.
((Both follow the same "reading" of the qur'an -- 'Asim transmitted by
Hafs -- except for pauses it is the same version of the book, only the
"notation" is different.))
Sequential tanween circled in blue, normal in red.
Just to demonstrated that not ALL tanween signs look different in
Qahira1924 orthography, I have included one normal tranween from that
copy: circled blue for being Qahira1924, red for being normal.
Qahira1924 uses the sequential tanween signs both for idghâm
(assimilation) and ikhfa' (partial suppression) -- when there is no
assimilation and no partial suppression (hiding) Qahira1924 uses the
normal tanween signs. So it is not that these are glyph variants.
My question is:
should we encoded
ARABIC Sequential FATHATAN,
ARABIC Sequential DAMMATAN, and
ARABIC Sequential KASRATAN.
or "just" one
ARABIC MODIFIER for SEQENTIAL TANWEEN ??
Arno Schmitt
(please excuse the somewhat German punctuation and phrasing)
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