More on Meteg and CGJ

From: Joan_Wardell@sil.org
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 16:10:12 EDT

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    ----- Forwarded by Joan Wardell/IntlAdmin/WCT on 07/29/2003 03:08 PM -----
                                                                                                                            
                          John Hudson
                          <tiro@tiro.com> To: Joan_Wardell@sil.org
                                                   cc:
                          07/29/2003 02:09 Subject: Re: Your name came up!
                          PM
                                                                                                                            

    At 09:32 AM 7/29/2003, Joan_Wardell@sil.org wrote:

    >Your name came up on the Unicode discussion list. Is this true? You would
    >be happy
    >with Hebrew as it stands with the current canonical order if we only added
    >one meteg
    >(presumably the right).

    Ken quoted me out of context, but perhaps I was unclear. At one point, I
    said that I didn't think a medial meteg character was necessary for
    rendering, because the ligation can be handled with the left meteg.
    Earlier, we were discussing various options for solving the re-ordering
    problem and I said that *if* this problem could be resolved without
    changing the combining classes (which I really don't think is going to
    happen), a right meteg might still be desirable.

    >You would be able to handle the examples below?

    >shin < hataf < dagesh < regular meteg < shindot

    Yes, this works fine. The font itself does not require strict ordering in
    all cases; in fact, the font can be remarkably flexible in this regard
    because of the different anchor attachment points defined (note that this
    is true for OT; other font technoligies might requires stricter ordering).
    There is, however, a subset of cases in which strict mark ordering is
    required for correct display. These have not all been documented yet

    >shin < hataf < dagesh < shindot <new right meteg

    Obviously I have not made this yet, but it would work in the same way as
    above.

    >shin < hataf < dagesh < regular meteg < shindot <
    >-where do I put the ZWNJ or the CGJ to get a left meteg on hataf?

    Okay, that one is ugly. ZWNJ breaks the dagesh and/or shindot positioning,
    depending on whether it is positioned immediately after the hataf vowel or
    the dagesh. A painted CGJ character might not cause the same problem or,
    rather, the problem might be resolved in glyph space with some fancy
    footwork. Generally speaking, there isn't a lot that can't be done once
    glyphs are painted, but obviously one doesn't want to over-complicate the
    lookups in a font: there are significant performance costs to smart font
    rendering, and it doesn't encourage font development for a script if things

    get too complicated for the average type designer to wrap his head around.

    Feel free to forward this to the Unicode list, if you think it will help
    clarify things. The third case of normalised text you identify is a serious

    problem for rendering, and having more of these sort of examples before the

    eyes of the UTC members and other interested parties will help refine
    possible solutions.

    Regards, John

    Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
    Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com

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