Gregg suggested:
>
> > > In some cases one may want to place diacritics over some
> > whitespace or a
> > > tatweel stroke, within a word.
> >
> > Ah, in the category of "whitespace" you include the whitespace between
> > non-ligated characters, for example the space between "a" and "b" in
> > this example: "ab". Whereas when I talk of whitespace, I
> > mean whitespace
> > that is wider than normal inter-letter spacing (absent ties between
> > letters), as in "a b". Does this difference simply make no sense in
> > Arabic script?
> >
>
> I guess I'm thinking in terms of "where there ain't no ink". But I think
> this is one of those areas where we could use some more refined terminology.
> How's about "liminal space"? I'm not sure what it means, but I remember it
> from an Anthropology class I took 150 years ago; I think it describes
> various kinds of cultic in-betweenness, or threshhold space, something like
> that. I propose we use "liminal space" to mean the space between the
> semiotically significant parts of letterforms, irrespective of ink. So both
> joined and non-joined sequences of letterforms are punctuated by liminal
> space, which is crossed by tie strokes in the former case and not in the
> latter. So getting back to the original issue: one might want to place a
> diacritic in liminal space.
>
Since "liminal" in its usual sense means "barely perceptible", i.e.
"at the threshold limit of perception", "liminal space" hardly seems
an appropriate coinage for this. Maybe one could say that a hair
space is a liminal space, but that would hardly apply to a regular
space or a tie stroke.
--Ken
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