Re: chairless hamza

From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
Date: Fri Jan 04 2008 - 21:18:28 CST

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    arno wrote:

    > I did NOT suggest to add an extra char, I asked for changing the defined
    > joing behaviour of an existing char, if that can be done!

    My concern with this approach is that it will break pretty much all current Arabic fonts.
    In instances in which the chairless hamza becomes 'transparent', i.e. when the letters on
    either side of it join, there needs to be an appropriate glyph substitution and
    positioning rules applied. Since most Arabic fonts currently treat the U+0621 as dividing,
    they will be unable to handle such situations if the character suddenly is given new
    properties. This is a particularly nasty situation for both font developers and users,
    since different software will implement the change at in different development cycles,
    users will adopt the new software at varying rates, there will be continued demand for
    fonts that work the old way, etc. A real mess.

    So if the issue is not to be addressed solely at the display level -- with perhaps an
    explanatory note added to the text of the Unicode Standard --, Khaled's suggestion is the
    cleanest way to implement a character-level solution.

    John Hudson

    -- 
    Tiro Typeworks        www.tiro.com
    Gulf Islands, BC      tiro@tiro.com
    The Lord entered her to become a servant.
    The Word entered her to keep silence in her womb.
    The thunder entered her to be quiet.
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