RE: Conflicting principles

From: Jony Rosenne (rosennej@qsm.co.il)
Date: Thu Aug 07 2003 - 00:56:09 EDT

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    From a textual point of view, it is quite clear which that the particular
    combining mark which precipitated the debate (The Hiriq in Yerushala(y)im)
    is not related to the preceding visible base character. It is without a
    visible base character.

    From a typographical point of view, this creates a problem, which I am not
    at all sure is a Unicode problem.

    Jony
     
    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org
    > [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Peter Kirk
    > Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 11:54 PM
    > To: John Jenkins
    > Cc: unicode@unicode.org
    > Subject: Re: Conflicting principles
    >
    >
    > On 06/08/2003 14:04, John Jenkins wrote:
    >
    > > Speaking purely as an old fart, I'd say the former. We
    > already break
    > > the latter principle in Thai and Lao, and having be
    > prepared to scan
    > > either forward or backward from a base character in order
    > to find its
    > > combining marks would add overhead to a lot of code, including
    > > existing code.
    > >
    > > On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 2:16 PM, John Cowan wrote:
    > >
    > >> I would like to ask the old farts^W^Wrespected elders of the UTC
    > >> which principle they consider more important, abstractly speaking:
    > >> the principle that combining marks always follow their base
    > >> characters (a typographical principle), or that text is
    > stored, with
    > >> a few minor exceptions, in phonetic order (a lexicographical
    > >> principle).
    > >>
    > >>
    > > ========
    > > John H. Jenkins
    > > jenkins@apple.com
    > > jhjenkins@mac.com
    > > http://homepage..mac.com/jhjenkins/
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > This answer presupposes that there is a well-defined concept of which
    > base character a combining mark belongs to. That is not
    > always true. The
    > particukar combining mark which precipitated the debate may
    > be situated
    > above the gap between the (logically and phonetically) preceding and
    > following characters, or may move on to the preceding or the
    > following
    > characters depending on the precise context and on the typographer's
    > preference.
    >
    > Anyway, John J, what code are we talking about that has to
    > work from the
    > positions of the combining marks back to the underlying
    > representation?
    > Are you talking about OCR?
    >
    > --
    > Peter Kirk
    > peter@qaya.org (personal)
    > peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    > http://www.qaya.org/
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >



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