From: James Kass (thunder-bird@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Nov 23 2007 - 16:35:49 CST
John H. Jenkins wrote and quoted,
> Actually, the common wisdom about Latin ligatures is to avoid the presentation forms and to use whatever ligature controls your
> rich- text system provides. ZWJ is "designed for marking the unusual cases where ligatures...are required. [It is] not to be
> used in all cases where ligatures...are desired; instead, [it is] meant only for overriding the normal behavior of text." (TUS
> p. 537)
Hmmm. The normal behavior of Latin text is that ligatures won't be
formed in plain text applications. The same is probably true for
Armenian. That leaves only ZWJs, presentation forms, or discarding
ligature information from plain text altogether.
Since other complex scripts such as Devanagari (etc.) allow the user
to specify ligature formation in plain text, I'm a proponent of
retaining those same options for Latin script plain text users.
Although I do agree that it is generally an unusual situation to
request Latin ligature formation in plain text. Sometimes it's
only done for effect.
Respec‍tfully.
James Kass
P.S. - ZWJ ligature formation in Armenian works on my system.
P.S.2 - On my English Unicode support test page I use Latin ligature
presentation forms. At the time the page was written, that was
the only way to reproduce the text electronically (in plain text or
HTML). I should update that page by removing the presentation
forms and inserting ZWJs.
( http://www.code2000.net/englishtestutf.htm )
P.S.3 - Please don't anyone make a new FAQ forbidding this practice.
If a new FAQ *must* be made about this, please limit the Consortium's
official position to "frowning upon" rather than "forbidding of".
Even better, just leave it be. If somebody wants to go through
gigabytes of plain text rabidly inserting ZWJs, I say, "let 'em".
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