RE: Major Defect in Combining Classes of Tibetan Vowels (Hebrew)

From: Jony Rosenne (rosennej@qsm.co.il)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 07:26:02 EDT

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    It may look, silly, but it is correct. What you see are letters according to
    the writing tradition, which does not include a Yod, and vowels according to
    the reading tradition which does. There are in the Bible other, more extreme
    cases.

    I don't think we need any new characters, ZERO WIDTH SPACE would do and it
    requires no new semantics. Moreover, everybody who knows his Hebrew Bible
    knows the Yod is there although it isn't written.

    The Meteg is a completely different issue. There is a small number of places
    were the Meteg is placed differently. Since it does not behave the same as
    the regular Meteg, and is thus visually distinguishable, it should be
    possible to add a character, as long as it is clearly named.

    Jony

    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org
    > [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of
    > Peter_Constable@sil.org
    > Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 9:43 AM
    > To: unicode@unicode.org
    > Subject: Re: Major Defect in Combining Classes of Tibetan
    > Vowels (Hebrew)
    >
    >
    > Jony Rosenne wrote on 06/26/2003 12:16:22 AM:
    >
    > > When, in the Bible, one sees two vowels on a given
    > consonant, it isn't
    > so.
    >
    > That's silly. When one sees two vowels on a given consonant
    > in the Bible,
    > it *is* so: the two vowels are written there. It may not
    > correspond to
    > actual phonology, ie what is spoken, but as has been made
    > clear on many
    > occasions, Unicode is not encoding phonology, it is encoding
    > text. And in
    > relation to text, your statement is simply wrong.
    >
    >
    > > There is one vowel for the consonant one sees, and another
    > vowel for an
    > > invisible consonant. The proper way to encode it is to use
    > some code to
    > > represent the invisible consonant. Then the problem
    > mentioned below does
    > not
    > > arise.
    >
    > The idea of an invisible consonant would amount to encoding a
    > phonological
    > entity, which is the kind of thing that was at one time
    > approved for Khmer
    > (invisible characters representing inherent vowels), but
    > later turned into
    > an albatross, and when I proposed the same thing (invisible inherent
    > vowel) for Syloti Nagri, it was made very clear to me that it
    > would not go
    > down well with UTC.
    >
    > Also, the proposed solution of an invisible consonant would leave
    > unresolved the problem of meteg-vowel ordering distinctions,
    > while the
    > alternate proposal of having meteg and vowels all with a class of 230
    > solves both problems at once. Two ad hoc solutions (one for
    > multi-vowel
    > ordering, and another for meteg-vowel ordering) must
    > certainly be far less
    > preferred for one motivated solution (having characters with
    > canonical
    > combining classes that are appropriate for the writing behaviours
    > exhibited).
    >
    > I invite people to review the discussions from the unicoRe
    > list from last
    > December, at which time everyone (including you, Jony) were
    > all concluding
    > that the solution which I proposed in L2/03-195 was the best
    > solution to
    > pursue.
    >
    >
    > - Peter
    >
    >
    > --------------------------------------------------------------
    -------------
    > Peter Constable
    >
    > Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
    > 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
    > Tel: +1 972 708 7485
    >
    >
    >



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