L2/17-164

Title: Joining properties of Syriac letters used for writing Malayalam
Author: Roozbeh Pournader (Google)
Date: May 9, 2017

I have been given an action item (143-A52) by the UTC to "Verify joining type
and joining group for 11 Syriac letters for Garshuni." Here are my conclusions
based on Anshuman Pandey's document L2/15-156:

1. The joining group for the letters is correct.

2. The joining type for all the letters appear correct. The only one with some
doubt is MALAYALAM LLA, where the source of the Pandey's document says (p.
15): "normally it only connects to the right and not to the left. However, in
some manuscripts, [... it] is connected in both directions." Closer
investigation of Pandey's document (pp. 21 and 22) show that indeed in some
manuscript styles the letter is dual-joining (Figure 15, p. 21), while in some
others it is right-joining (Figure 16, p. 22).

This is in some way comparable to the case of Manichaean ALEPH (see L2/11-123,
p. 3) and in some way comparable to various styles of Arabic calligraphy where
a right-joining letter like Alef may join to the left stylistically (similar
to how Latin lowercase letters join each other in hand-writing).

The proposed joining type, D, has the implication that in digitization
projects that need a right-joining form, they should be using ZWNJ frequently
after the letter LLA to make sure it does not connect to its left-side letter.
But that is a easier situation to handle than if the letter gets the joining
type R, resulting in fonts that want to support a joint form trying to get it
working through various ligatures and contextual forms. The author recommend
keeping the joining type as D, but adding a comment to the Core Spec about the
need for use of ZWNJ.

In that light, it should also be noted that the initial and medial glyphs for
LLA do not match the manuscripts. In manuscripts, the connection is made at
the loop and not on the baseline. The glyphs, if included in the Core Spec,
need to be correct.

3. The table on page 2 of L2/15-156 is confusing regarding the letters
MALAYALAM RA, MALAYALAM LLLA, and MALAYALAM SSA. Since these are right-joining
letters, the entries in the initial and medial columns should be removed for
those letters. If the table is to be included in the Core Specification in
some form, the editors should be careful to remove those entries from the
table.