Re: Arabic letters without dots

OK, I've found U+066E ARABIC LETTER DOTLESS BEH and U+066F ARABIC LETTER
DOTLESS QAF and U+06A1 ARABIC LETTER DOTLESS FEH.
Also U+06BA ARABIC LETTER NOON GHUNNA, which is not called "dotless".

Sorry for the trouble.

(Though as these are characters with shaping behaviour, one still has to
make a decision when confronted with a tooth to whether to encode it as
ALEF MAKSURA, DOTLESS BEH or NOON GHUNNA and for a loop between DOTLESS
QAF, DOTLESS FEH or WAW, while the the transcription on the first level, in
terms of paleographic analysis should not make such an assumption, that's
already the goal of the excercise).

Szabolcs

--
Szelp, André Szabolcs
+43 (650) 79 22 400
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 13:06, Szelp A. Szabolcs <a.sz.szelp_at_gmail.com>wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was studying some coins (8-9th c.) with Arabic inscriptions (in Kufi
> script). In that time, letters weren't distinguished by dots, so several
> letters had homographic forms. I was wondering how one could transcribe the
> coins into a digital format for further study to establish the reading,
> i.e. explicitly _before_ one has established the identity of the letters.
>
> While one could take the dotless form in the case of JIM:HA:KHA,
> DAL:DHAL, RA:ZAYN, SIN:SHIN, SAD:DAD, TA:ZA, AYN:GHAYN (though not this
> wouldn't be completely correct, as the letter, at this stage of analysis
> isn't a HA, but represents the set {JIM, HA, KHA}),
> I don't see how the group BA-TA-THA (and medially also NUN, YE) or the
> QAF-FE group could be transcribed to keep the ambiguity. (WAW only works
> medially, as a bad substitute).
>
> I have checked the Arabic blocks (though I have spotty font coverage
> available here right now), and I could not find a way to represent the
> letters for such a purpose. I know that letters which are not "characters"
> of their own right (actually historical or allographic variants) have been
> encoded previously, and also quite recently (e.g. for Cyrillic). Also for
> Arabic we have KEHEH (a KEH with Persian final-form-behaviour, and SWASH
> KEH, the very Kufic paleographic variant I'm looking for for other
> letters). I was wondering whether such Arabic un-dotted letters have been
> suggested or not? (Or even added, and I just did not find them).
>
> Thanks for pointers and info,
> Szabolcs
>
> --
> Szelp, André Szabolcs
>
> +43 (650) 79 22 400
>