Re: combining characters using ZWJ

From: Sandeep Srivastava (sandeep.kumar.srivastava@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Jan 28 2006 - 03:29:26 CST

  • Next message: Sandeep Srivastava: "Re: combining characters using ZWJ"

    On 1/27/06, Andreas Prilop <nhtcapri@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote:
    >
    > On Fri, 27 Jan 2006, Sandeep Srivastava wrote:
    >
    > > How can I force
    >
    > You cannot force, says Mahatma Gandhi.

    Thanks Andreas. I respect Mahatma Gandhi too, and therefore, no forcing...

    > 'a' and 'e' to get combined so that it is displayed as the
    > > ligature 'ae'? The ZWJ doesn't work here??
    >
    > "æ" is a character of its own - not just a ligature.

    Right. And that I know. I was wondering, if ZWJ can be used to create
    ligatures as well, because in theory, ligatures too can be called as
    composite characters. So, if I understand you correctly, ligatures are full
    blown characters, and that they cannot be created using the individual
    characters they represent in any way.

    > I also found that every script has a different 'combining mark' to combine
    > > characters. For example, U+09CD is the combining mark used for the
    > Bengali
    > > script, and U+094D is the combining mark used for the Hindi script.
    >
    > That's not a "combining mark". A combining mark is something like
    > candrabindu or anusvara or the vowels in Indic scripts:
    > http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/unicode/#marks
    > http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/unicode/unidata09.html#x0901

    Well, then I fail to understand, how does the two indic characters 'स' (
    U+0938) and 'त' (U+0924) get combined as 'स्त' (note the first character
    gets broken in half to get combined with the second one) when using the
    halant (U+094D) -- i.e. using the sequence "U+0938 U+094D U+0924"

    So, isn't it then right to say the halant (U+094D) is a joiner -- that joins
    two characters?

    See:
    http://www.unicode.org/faq/indic.html#17

    > If that's the case, then what is the use of ZWJ?
    >
    > The zero-width joiner ZWJ is mainly used with the Arabic script. See
    > http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/bidirectional-text.html#zwj
    > for some examples. The ZWJ has some limited use with Indic scripts:
    > http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/sanskrit-alphabet.html#conjuncts

    Right. I understand this point. I was trying to find out the boundary of the
    ZWJ -- how far can it go to combine characters.

    Thanks,
    Sandeep.

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