Hebrew Sof Pasuq etc (was: Unicode Public Review Issues update)

From: Peter Kirk (peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 17:04:02 EDT

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    On 25/07/2003 13:03, Rick McGowan wrote:

    >The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review
    >and comment. Details are on the following web page:
    >
    > http://www.unicode.org/review/
    >
    >Review periods for the new item closes on August 18, 2003.
    >
    >Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
    >Briefly, the new issue is:
    >
    > Issue #12 Terminal Punctuation Characters
    >
    >
    >
    >
    I was surprised to see U+05C3 # HEBREW PUNCTUATION SOF PASUQ listed as
    neither Terminal_Punctuation nor Sentence_Terminal. The main use of this
    character is to indicate the end of a verse in the Hebrew Bible
    (although it is missing from the end of a few verses); I am not aware of
    any other use. It is certainly used only at the end of a word, similarly
    to colon, semicolon etc, and so should surely be classed as
    Terminal_Punctuation. The same is true of U+05C0 # HEBREW PUNCTUATION
    PASEQ. And from what Jony has just written, U+05BE # HEBREW PUNCTUATION
    MAQAF should also be treated as a word divider and so classed as
    Terminal_Punctuation.

    Also, within the Hebrew Bible text which does not use full stop or any
    other sentence terminating punctuation, the only real analogue of a
    sentence is a verse. So, at least in the context of the Hebrew Bible, it
    would be sensible to class U+05C3 (but not U+05C0 or U+05BE) also as
    Sentence_Terminal.

    Maybe someone on this list can see a good reason for not giving these
    properties to these characters. Unless someone can explain one to me, I
    will post this response formally to http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html.

    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com
    http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
    


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