Re: Pashto yeh characters

From: Andreas Prilop (prilop4321@trashmail.net)
Date: Tue Jul 27 2010 - 11:43:19 CDT

  • Next message: David Starner: "Re: Pashto yeh characters"

    On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, linguist@artstein.org wrote:

    > [...]
    > To wrap up, are my observations about the Pashto writing conventions
    > correct? And is there a standard for assigning the Pashto characters
    > representing /j/ and /i:/ to Unicode code points?

    Practical answer:

    U+0649 and U+064A are included in MacArabic/MacFarsi and Windows-1256;
    but U+06CC is not. Support for 0649 and 064A in fonts is still better
    than for 06CC. For example, try the various Arabic fonts in Windows XP:
     http://www.user.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/temp/ya.arabic.html

    Therefore you should use only U+0649 and U+064A for Arabic, Persian, Urdu
    if you want your documents to be displayed on other computers.
    I have done so in
     http://www.user.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/arabic-alphabet.html
     http://www.user.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/persian-alphabet.html
     http://www.user.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/mac-urdu-alphabet.html

    However, for Pashto you need characters outside Windows-1256 anyway.

       * * * * * *

    Theoretical answer:

    U+0649 has (should have) four glyphs without any dots. This is no
    Arabic letter, but an Uighur letter. Therefore you should not use
    U+0649 for Arabic, Persian, Pashto, Urdu but only U+06CC.
    I have done so in
     http://www.user.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/urdu-alphabet.html
     http://www.user.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/pashto-alphabet.html

    U+0649 has the traditional name "alif maqsura" because it was
    taken from ISO-8859-6. But I see no objection to use U+06CC
    for alif maqsura.

    You cannot distinguish the initial and middle glyphs of 064A and 06CC.
    Use whatever you want. Given the practical answer above, you might
    prefer U+064A. But if you don't have U+06CC in your font, you
    probably don't have Pashto letters either.



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