Roozbeh Pournader wrote
> > > 2. In practice, are digits from different scripts ever mixed?
> >
> > I don't think this normally happens.
>
> Yes, that happens in Persian contexts. There are texts that
> use both kind of digits. Arabic-Extended ones for numerical
> values and European ones for references to latin texts.
> [...]
Right, I was naive. In this case, I guess that a line beginning by
"12-34-56" should go near a line beginning by "۱۲-۳۴-۵۶" (the same numbers
written in Arabic-Extended=Persian digits).
But what will this look like in a bidi context? Probably, the two section
number will go on opposite sides of the line. And, I wonder, how will the
Persian number look like in RTL? My mail client shows the string above as
"56-23-12"! Would such a collation be friendly for a human reader?
Do you have concrete examples of how Persian book indices are organized in
such cases? Are European and Persian numbers listed separately?
> 1. No, we are talking about typewritten text, I guess. These
> digits are clearly distinguished in such contexts in all the
> fonts I know.
Well, I don't know if the distinction is so clear. Certainly a typographer
or a careful reader would notice the difference, yet I'd try to avoid these
cases in real life. Even in European usage, when letters and digits are
used together to form identifiers or part numbers, it is customary to
exclude letters "I" and "O" to avoid confusion with one and zero.
> 2. BTW, Extended-Arabic variants of "five" and "six" are very
> different from European "zero" and "seven", even when
> handwritten.
Well, "five" is still too similar to European "zero", and "six" is similar
to European "nine". But, OK, the possibility of confusion is much smaller
than with the digits used in Arab countries.
_ Marco
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