Re: Biblical Hebrew (Was: Major Defect in Combining Classes of Tibetan Vowels)

From: Mark Davis (mark.davis@jtcsv.com)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 17:45:39 EDT

  • Next message: Kenneth Whistler: "Re: Yerushala(y)im - or Biblical Hebrew (was Major Defect in Combining Classes of Tibetan Vowels)"

    Another consequence is that it separates the sequence into two
    combining sequences, not one. Don't know if this is a serious problem,
    especially since we are concerned with a limited domain with
    non-modern usage, but I wanted to mention it.

    Mark
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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Kenneth Whistler" <kenw@sybase.com>
    To: <Peter_Constable@sil.org>
    Cc: <unicode@unicode.org>; <kenw@sybase.com>
    Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 13:41
    Subject: Re: Biblical Hebrew (Was: Major Defect in Combining Classes
    of Tibetan Vowels)

    > Peter replied to Karljürgen:
    >
    > > Karljürgen Feuerherm wrote on 06/25/2003 08:31:41 PM:
    > >
    > > > I was going to suggest something very similar, a
    ZW-pseudo-consonant of
    > > some
    > > > kind, which would force each vowel to be associated with one
    consonant.
    > >
    > > An invisible *consonant* doesn't make sense because the problem
    involves
    > > more than just multiple written vowels on one consonant;
    >
    > I agree that we don't want to go inventing invisible consonants for
    > this.
    >
    > BTW, there's already an invisible vowel (in fact a pair of them)
    > that is unwanted by the stakeholders of the script it was
    > originally invented for:
    >
    > U+17B4 KHMER VOWEL INHERENT AQ
    >
    > This is also (cc=0), so would serve to block canonical reordering
    > if placed between two Hebrew vowel points. But I'm sure that if
    > Peter thought the suggestion of the ZWJ for this was a "groanable
    > kludge", Biblical Hebraicists would probably not take lightly
    > to the importation of an invisible Khmer character into their
    > text representations. ;-)
    >
    > > in fact, that is
    > > a small portion of the general problem. If we want such a
    character, it
    > > would notionally be a zero-width-canonical-ordering-inhibiter, and
    nothing
    > > more.
    >
    > The fact is that any of the zero-width format controls has the
    > side-effect of inhibiting (or rather interrupting) canonical
    reordering
    > if inserted in the middle of a target sequence, because of their
    > own class (cc=0).
    >
    > I'm not particularly campaigning for ZWJ, by the way. ZWNJ or even
    > U+FEFF ZWNBSP would accomplish the same. I just suggested ZWJ
    because
    > it seemed in the ballpark. ZWNBSP would likely have fewer possible
    > other consequences, since notionally it means just "don't break
    here",
    > which you wouldn't do in the middle of a Hebrew combining character
    > sequence, anyway.
    >
    > > And I don't particular want to think about what happens when
    people start
    > > sticking this thing into sequences other than Biblical Hebrew ("in
    > > unicode, any sequence is legal").
    >
    > But don't forget that these cc=0 zero width format controls already
    > can be stuck into sequences other than Biblical Hebrew. In some
    > instances they have defined semantics there (as for Arabic and
    > Indic scripts), but in all cases they would *already* have the
    > effect of interrupting canonical reordering of combining character
    > sequences if inserted there.
    >
    > --Ken
    >
    >
    >
    >



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