From: Mete Kural (metek@touchtonecorp.com)
Date: Mon Sep 19 2005 - 17:54:38 CDT
Hello Lateef and Michael,
Similar to the need for an additional hamza character for Urdu and Sindhi that you have mentioned Lateef, there is also a need for a seperate hamza character for classical Arabic. The currently available U+0621 hamza character is sufficient for modern Arabic and Persian. U+0621 hamza is defined to be a dis-joining character when found in medial position in a word which is the correct behaviour in Persian. Meaning, it causes the letters that come before it and after it to disconnect from each other, if they do connect normally. But in classical Arabic, hamza is not a dis-joining character when in medial position, it is rather a floating character that flots over the connection between two letter that connect. Numerous examples are found in most printings of the Quran (verse 2:4 look for al-aakhira, verse 2:33 look for yaa'adamu, etc., etc.). Because of this missing hamza (and several other things) it is impossible to encode "the most common editions" of the Qur'an such as the Saudi or Egyptian editions in Uni
code today. I think Urdu and Sindhi users would also be interested in making sure that Qur'an can be encoded in Unicode. Unfortunately to this day this isn't possible.
I suggest that we put together a joint team and propose both the hamza needed for Urdu and Sindhi and the hamza needed for classical Arabic together in one proposal in order to make a stronger argument. Please let me know if you would like to pursue this.
Kind Regards,
Mete
-- Mete Kural Touchtone Corporation 714-755-2810 --
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