Reynolds, Gregg schrieb:
> Some notes on alef maqsurah:
>
> Unicode codepoint U+0649 is defined as "alef maqsurah", and the
> representative glyph shows a dotless ya. This is not so much incorrect as
> misleading. The term "alef maqsurah" denotes a phonological, not a
> graphemic, phenomenon. It may be represented by either a dotless ya (ram_A,
> he threw) or by a plain old alef (ghazA, he invaded). In both cases, the
> naming of the "character" represents a phonological analysis: its an alef
> pronounced short when followed by a consonant.
>
> This is a case where Unicode could be improved by a sharper distinction
> between abstract character semantics and (abstract) presentational
> semantics. If the character semantics of U+0649 are to be "alef maqsurah",
> then the text should make clear that the presentation of the character may
> use either of two forms, "dotless ya" or "alef" (alef=U+0627). In this
> case, we need another codepoint for dotless ya. The alternative would be to
> change the semantics of U+0649 to "dotless yah" (a purely presentational
> semantics) and add a codepoint for alef maqsurah. I would prefer the
> former, myself.
I guess, what would is _called_ "alef maksura" is really a dotless
yah in final/iso position -- Global Writer and Global Office, the
widely used "unicode-programs" for Win 95, display u0649 even in
middle position as dotless yah. In Arabic MSWord 97 alif maqsurah
has only two forms: dotless yah in final and iso position. In
order to write "ghazA" I have to type an ordinary alif (which will
be stored as u0627 although it is called by Wright "alif
maqsurah"). I suppose (!) it is like this in Office 2000.
Anyhow, how would the rendering machine how, whether alif maqsurah
should be rendered like (as?) a dotless yah or as alif erectus?
(My problem is not: How should the writer know whether an
hamzaless alif is alif or alif maqsurah, because Arabic should be
written by people who know Arabic and not by an illiterate
copyist.)
>
> In either case, both dotless ya and alef maqsurah are needed. Dotless ya
> would serve an additional purpose, since it is commonly used in Egypt to
> denote the abstract character value "ya"; this is another place where a
> sharper distinction between abstract character and presentation would be
> useful. It should be possible (IMHO) for an Egyptian writer to choose the
> dotless ya form to represent the dotted ya semantics. This is really no
> different than supporting upper and lower case, except that dotless ya maps
> to more than one abstract character.
Here, I disagree. That end- and iso-yah have no dots is not a
property of the word in question, but just a local rendering
convention. When a book originally published in Syria with a final
dotted yah is quoted in Egyptian it is rendered without the dots,
just like in some German fonts A Umlaut is rendered not as "Ä" but
as "Ae".
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:48 EDT