Re: UTR# 15 - Objection to Hebrew Exclusions

From: Jonathan Rosenne (rosenne@qsm.co.il)
Date: Thu Oct 21 1999 - 17:07:31 EDT


With all due respect, it is not reasonable to define a standard
normalization that would make Unicode unusable for Hebrew.

The characters listed:
- are not part of the Hebrew subset
- are not required to support Hebrew
- are not available in Hebrew fonts
- are not supported or even recognized by most Hebrew software
- are not included in any Israeli national standard

In Unicode, they are either deprecated or added specifically to support
Yiddish.

Since normalization is not language dependant, a choice has to be made.

I would like to observe that most users of Yiddish, in Israel and in
Europe, are satisfied with the standard Hebrew support. So we are not
excluding the language, only a particular usage.

The character FB1D # HEBREW LETTER YOD WITH HIRIQ should be added to the
exclusion list.

Jony

At 23:36 20/10/99 -0700, Mark H. David wrote:
>This e-letter pertains to the document "Unicode Technical Report #15
>Unicode Normalization Forms", located at
>
>http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr15/
>
>This normalization form is emerging as an intermediate to long-term
>solution to several problems in implementating certain classes of
>applications, e.g., terminal emulators, font subsystems, etc.
>
>However, there is a small list of Unicode precomposed characters that
>are excluded from this form of normalization. The list is at
>
>ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/3.0-Update/CompositionExclusions-1.txt
>
>I object to the Hebrew characters being in the exclusion table for
>Unicode Normalization because they totally negate the intended benefit
>for Yiddish-language applications of this normalization.
>
>As for the Hebrew-language use of the affected characters, the
>normalization process does no harm, since it is reversible.
>Furthermore, it is only intended for applications that need to use it,
>such as terminal emulators and so on.
>
>The inclusion of Hebrew compositions in this normalization form would
>not consitute a recommendation to prefer composition over
>decomposition for the Hebrew or Yiddish languages or the Hebrew
>script. Furthermore, any impact on Hebrew the language would
>effectively be unnoticeable for real-world applications, since most
>applications of the Hebrew script for the Hebrew language do not make
>use of any compositions.
>
>The following compositions are needed for Yiddish according to its
>standard orthography.
>
>1. FB1D # HEBREW LETTER YOD WITH HIRIQ (*)
>2. FB1F # HEBREW LIGATURE YIDDISH YOD YOD PATAH
>3. FB2B # HEBREW LETTER SHIN WITH SIN DOT
>4. FB2E # HEBREW LETTER ALEF WITH PATAH
>5. FB2F # HEBREW LETTER ALEF WITH QAMATS
>6. FB35 # HEBREW LETTER VAV WITH DAGESH
>7. FB3B # HEBREW LETTER KAF WITH DAGESH
>8. FB44 # HEBREW LETTER PE WITH DAGESH
>9. FB4A # HEBREW LETTER TAV WITH DAGESH
>10. FB4C # HEBREW LETTER BET WITH RAFE
>11. FB4E # HEBREW LETTER PE WITH RAFE
>
>(*) Note: FB1D is not in the exclusion list, but belongs with the group of
characters there. It is a new Unicode precomposed Hebrew character.
>
>Mark H. David
>Moderator, UYIP (Understanding Yiddish Information Processing)
>http://www.uyip.org/

>



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