Arabic Jazm Urdu

From: CE Whitehead (cewcathar@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Mar 17 2011 - 09:19:14 CST

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    Hi once more.
    From: CE Whitehead (cewcathar@hotmail.com)
    Date: Sat Mar 12 2011 - 01:25:20 CST

    > Hi.
    > From: Vinodh Rajan (vinodh.vinodh@gmail.com)
    > Date: Fri Mar 11 2011 - 12:40:34 CST

    >> Hi,

    >> I found a proposal for the character /Arabic Jazm Urdu/ here :
    >> http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/WG2/docs/n2413-4.pdf

    >> Ishida's page on Urdu ( http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/urdu/ ) recommends
    >> that, the /Jazm/ be handled a font variant of the Arabic /Sukun/.

    >> (The other character *not* recommended by Ishida, but supposedly having the
    >> same form is U+06E1.
    > It seems that U+0652 is recommended for both the sukun/jazm normally (with language-specific
    > styling applied I guess; the exception
    > would be the Q'uran where both U+06E1 and U+0652 are used; and of course the Q'uran is in a
    > single language, Arabic).
    >> Although, the shape seems to be different than that of
    >> the /Jazm/ in Govt. of Pakisan's proposal )
    > It looks like the French "circonflex" apparently:
    > http://users.skynet.be/hugocoolens/newurdu/specials.html
    > (It apparently can either be on its side or look like the circonflex;
    > albeit an inverted one
    > so there are two forms/glyphs for jazm; sukun looks like a tiny o or 0 but again is a diacritic; so
    > altogether there are three
    > different shapes here.)
    >> Why was this character not encoded ?

    >> Is it recommended by the Unicode that the Urdu /Jazm/ be handled as a glyph
    >> variant of the Arabic /Sukun/. ?
    > I personally don't see a reason to encode it separately in idns.
    > (In fact the three dots above an Arabic tah with dots look like a circonflex too, and so this might be
    > confusing to have jazm too in idns.
    > However, I don't know why some urdu characters are encoded separately from Arabic and some
    > not -- as the numbers can be a
    > security issue for idns too if care is not taken, yet these are encoded separately; but I personally
    > would not allow jazm character in
    > idns;
    > Unicode apparently -- in 2002 -- needed to see more research before encoding the Urdu jazm:
    > http://unicode.org/consortium/utc-minutes/UTC-091-200205.html .)
    > For the Q'uran, perhaps a separate character could be encoded; but I feel it would be best to ask
    > native speakers of Arabic what they > think.
      
    > Normally jazm and sukun have the same use apparently; they both indicate the absence of a vowel
    > and are different than "null."

    > (http://www.cle.org.pk/clt10/papers/Automatic%20Diacritization%20for%20Urdu.pdf :
    > "Though Null diacritic may be
    > generally confused with Jazm (which marks absence
    > of Zer, Zabar or Pesh on consonants), the two are
    > quite distinct. Null is used to indicated absence of a
    > diacritic on a consonant before long vowels, thus on
    > onset consonants in a syllable, whereas Jazm is used
    > on consonants to indicate that they are coda position
    > in a syllable (see [6] for discussion on Urdu syllable
    > structure).")

    > A sukun-like character is used instead to mean "null" in the Q'uran it seems, however.

    > According to SIL's info, Quranic requirements are in some ways met with U+06E1 and U+0652,
    > except that U+0652 corresponds in the Q'uran to "ignore this consonant" (null) whereas normally
    > in the Arabic language it indicates,
    > like the Urdu jazm, no vowel:
    > ftp://ftp.sil.org/unicode/arabic_marks/Arabic_Marks.doc.pdf
      
    > (It seems to me that the Unicode notes on these two characters are not quite clear.)
      
    > Elsewhere, outside of the Q'uran you can change your font variant for the urdu text, using
    > language styling.
      
    > (Hope this helps anwer your question; sorry I can't do better.)
      
    > Best,
    > --C. E. Whitehead
    > cewcathar@hotmail.com
    My goof -- Vinodh is right in wondering how to get the jazm to display.
     
    While fonts are being discussed, does anyone know what font will display the jazm character (currently encoded as a variant of the sukun, U+0652) properly for Urdu?
    I am not quite happy with the display of the Q'uranic "vowel suppressor" (U+06E1) either -- though at least it's displayed as not just a sukun -- and so would be curious to know what font can be used for that too (Tahoma seems o.k. for Q'uranic Arabic, but not really for the Urdu jazm; in spite of the info at http://salrc.uchicago.edu/resources/fonts/available/urdu/.; but I do not wholly like the way the Arabic jazm 06E1 was displayed even in Tahoma; I found some info at: http://zekr.org/wiki/Arabic_fonts but have not tried any of these [I have Windows XP and can't upgrade to Windows 7 starter, only to premium so am holding off]; are these worth it? Does anyone know which fonts properly display these characters?)
     
    (I attached a text with the characters . . . so anyone who has these fonts can just check it.)
    Best,
     
    --C. E. Whitehead
    cewcathar@hotmail.com
                                                   





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