Re: Persian letters Kaf and Heh with Yeh above

From: Roozbeh Pournader (roozbeh@sharif.edu)
Date: Wed May 09 2001 - 07:06:06 EDT


On Wed, 9 May 2001, Vladimir Ivanov wrote:

> In Windows 2000 there was no built in method to enter Heh with Yeh
> above 06C0 in Persian texts. Now, thanks to Whistler, you can do that
> by pressing Shift+G.

I hope these problems get fixed AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. By fixing, I also
mean that U+06C0 should NOT be on the keyboard, but a U+0654, Hamza Above
instead which can then be used to make Heh with Yeh above. I have written
a long list for Microsoft about proper Persian keyboard support. One of my
main points has been ABSOLUTELY not assigning any key for U+06C0, not only
because the character is obsolete and broken (look below), but also
because Persian people do not think of Heh with Yeh above as a single
letter, so they won't need that as a single key. I also gave them Unicode
mapping data for the Iranian standard keyboard, ISIRI 2901, which an
electronic copy of in Persian can be found at
<http://www.isiri.org/std/2901.htm>).

I really hope that all the problems of Microsoft Persian keyboard gets
fixed in the shipping version of XP. Unfortunately, I've found that they
did not like the idea of the standard Persian keyboard, ISIRI 2901, which
have had the shortest learning curve relative to all Persian keyboards
we've seen, many people are already familiar with it, has a really good
grouping of the characters that let's the poeple who forget the keys and
do not have them on the keycaps guess the correct key, etc.

Here, I would like to mention again that we need STANDARD Persian support
in any product that claims to support Persian/Farsi. E.g., there's no
problem if a company likes to have also its own customizations, but it
should also provide the standard layout or at least provide a method so
that the user can customize the layout herself. The same is true about
collation or anything else.

I (and High Council of Informatics of Iran, which I'm a representative
of), can provide free advice to any organization who likes to support
standard Persian in their product. So please ask for that.

> 2) Times New Roman font has no such symbol. Entering Heh with Yeh
> above 06C0 automatically switches the font to Tahoma. So, if you don't
> pay any attention, the rest of your text will be in Tahoma (see Lines
> 2 and 3).
> 3) Heh with Yeh above 06C0 is not linked to the preceding letter (see
> Line 3).

Please do not use the U+06C0 code for Persian. Starting with Unicode 3.0,
only the name is Heh with Yeh above, but not the semantics. The semantics
is Ae with Hamza Above. That can be verified by looking at the cannonical
decomposion of the character: 06D5 0654 (ARABIC LETTER AE+ARABIC HAMZA
ABOVE). Apart from the semantics (you may only want the shape), there is a
currently a contradiction in the way one can render the letter. U+06C0 is
considered a right joining letter, but when decomposed, it will become a
non-joining one. So there's nothing wrong with the way Microsoft renders
it, it's the spec that's broken.

Use U+0647 + U+0654 instead.

--roozbeh



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