Re: combining characters using ZWJ

From: Andreas Prilop (nhtcapri@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de)
Date: Fri Jan 27 2006 - 10:11:58 CST

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    On Fri, 27 Jan 2006, Sandeep Srivastava wrote:

    > How can I force

    You cannot force, says Mahatma Gandhi.

    > 'a' and 'e' to get combined so that it is displayed as the
    > ligature 'ae'? The ZWJ doesn't work here??

    "æ" is a character of its own - not just a ligature.

    > I also found that every script has a different 'combining mark' to combine
    > characters. For example, U+09CD is the combining mark used for the Bengali
    > script, and U+094D is the combining mark used for the Hindi script.

    That's not a "combining mark". A combining mark is something like
    candrabindu or anusvara or the vowels in Indic scripts:
    http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/unicode/#marks
    http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/unicode/unidata09.html#x0901

    > If that's the case, then what is the use of ZWJ?

    The zero-width joiner ZWJ is mainly used with the Arabic script. See
    http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/bidirectional-text.html#zwj
    for some examples. The ZWJ has some limited use with Indic scripts:
    http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/sanskrit-alphabet.html#conjuncts



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