From: Jony Rosenne (rosennej@qsm.co.il)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 15:57:13 EDT
I was under the impression that old English manuscripts did use different
glyphs for the two sounds of th. 
Jony
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Kirk [mailto:peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 8:30 PM
> To: Jony Rosenne
> Cc: unicode@unicode.org
> Subject: Re: Hebrew Vav Holam
> 
> 
> On 31/07/2003 11:31, Jony Rosenne wrote:
> 
> >This argumentation applies equally well to th (which should 
> be at least 
> >two Unicodes in English), gh (how many?), etc.
> >
> >Jony
> >
> >  
> >
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: Ted Hopp [mailto:ted@newslate.com]
> >>Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 4:58 PM
> >>To: Peter Kirk
> >>Cc: Jony Rosenne; unicode@unicode.org
> >>Subject: Re: Hebrew Vav Holam
> >>
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >...
> >  
> >
> >>I think of holam male as an indivisible glyph that happens to
> >>look like a vav with a dot centered above it (or above its 
> >>stem, if you will, but that's just how it might vary from 
> >>font to font). It's much the same as a lower-case 'i' not 
> >>being a dotless i glyph with a combining dot. (Sometimes an 
> >>'i' is just an 'i'.) I wouldn't call the dot anything but a 
> >>dot, certainly not a holam male.
> >>
> >>Let's encode Hebrew, not dots. It may mean changes to what
> >>SIL, UniScribe, and others are doing, but there's no free 
> lunch here.
> >>
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> As a native speaker of English, I certainly think of th and gh as 
> sequences of two glyphs, not as indivisible combinations, so 
> that is the 
> difference here.
> 
> But a better example might be French e, e acute and e grave. 
> These are 
> three separate letters which need three different ways to 
> encode them. 
> Whether the accented versions are encoded as one character or two is 
> unimportant as long as they are distinct. Similarly we have three 
> letters, vav on its own, vav with right holam and vav with 
> left holam, 
> and so we need three ways of encoding them.
> 
> As for the character name, I am forced to consider these entirely 
> meaningless except for being unique and stable, as UTC has refused to 
> correct demonstrable mistakes in these names, including at least one 
> Hebrew accent. So I would actually prefer to use a meaningless random 
> string of characters because at least that is more or less guaranteed 
> not to be misleading.
> 
> -- 
> Peter Kirk
> peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com
> http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
> 
> 
> 
> 
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