Re: CLDR: Bad exemplar chars for some locales [ar,fa]

From: Peter Edberg (pedberg@apple.com)
Date: Thu Apr 06 2006 - 10:58:31 CST

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    OK, it sounds like ZWNJ "is necessary for writing Persian where
    certain affixes and compound words do not join" (per the first
    website below).

    The need for ZWJ in Persian seems more specialized, I am not sure it
    demonstrates that ZWJ is required for most uses of Persian.

    The Arabic examples for ZWJ and ZWNJ seem to be all for special
    display cases (and partly to work around browser-specific display
    issues), and again I would argue that these are not cases that should
    be covered by the standard exemplar set. Perhaps for Arabic, ZWJ and
    ZWNJ should be in an auxiliary characters set.

    The non-Arabic-language examples (e.g. for Urdu and Sindhi) do not
    apply to the "ar" or ""fa" locales.

    All of this hinges on the definition of what the exemplar set is
    supposed to cover. From UTS #35 (LDML): "The exemplar character set
    contains the commonly used letters for a given modern form of a
    language... It is not a complete set of letters used for a language,
    nor should it be considered to apply to multiple languages in a
    particular country. Punctuation and other symbols should not be
    included. In general, the test to see whether or not a letter belongs
    in the set is based on whether it is acceptable in that language to
    always use spellings that avoid that character."

    -Peter E

    On Apr 6, 2006, at 12:41 AM PDT, Andreas Prilop wrote:
    > They are! See
    > http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/bidirectional-text.html#zwnj
    > http://www.laits.utexas.edu/persian/persianword/zwnj.htm
    >
    > http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/bidirectional-text.html#zwj
    > http://www.laits.utexas.edu/persian/persianword/zwj.htm

    On Apr 5, 2006, at 5:40 PM PDT, Asmus Freytag wrote:
    > I believe that extensive discussion on the bidi list has
    > established that ZWNJ is indeed needed for Persian.

    On Apr 5, 2006, at 5:25 PM PDT, Michael Everson wrote (somewhat
    cryptically):
    > Please consult our Iranian colleagues on this question.

    On Apr 5, 2006, at 5:03 PM PDT, Peter Edberg wrote:
    > 1. Arabic (ar) & Persian (fa):
    > - Both of these include 200C and 200D (ZWNJ and ZWJ). I would argue
    > that these characters are not required in order to write Arabic or
    > Persian.
    >

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