RE: Hebrew Vav Holam

From: Jony Rosenne (rosennej@qsm.co.il)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 15:57:13 EDT

  • Next message: Peter_Constable@sil.org: "Re: Hebrew Vav Holam"

    I was under the impression that old English manuscripts did use different
    glyphs for the two sounds of th.

    Jony

    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: Peter Kirk [mailto:peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com]
    > Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 8:30 PM
    > To: Jony Rosenne
    > Cc: unicode@unicode.org
    > Subject: Re: Hebrew Vav Holam
    >
    >
    > On 31/07/2003 11:31, Jony Rosenne wrote:
    >
    > >This argumentation applies equally well to th (which should
    > be at least
    > >two Unicodes in English), gh (how many?), etc.
    > >
    > >Jony
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > >>-----Original Message-----
    > >>From: Ted Hopp [mailto:ted@newslate.com]
    > >>Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 4:58 PM
    > >>To: Peter Kirk
    > >>Cc: Jony Rosenne; unicode@unicode.org
    > >>Subject: Re: Hebrew Vav Holam
    > >>
    > >>
    > >>
    > >>
    > >...
    > >
    > >
    > >>I think of holam male as an indivisible glyph that happens to
    > >>look like a vav with a dot centered above it (or above its
    > >>stem, if you will, but that's just how it might vary from
    > >>font to font). It's much the same as a lower-case 'i' not
    > >>being a dotless i glyph with a combining dot. (Sometimes an
    > >>'i' is just an 'i'.) I wouldn't call the dot anything but a
    > >>dot, certainly not a holam male.
    > >>
    > >>Let's encode Hebrew, not dots. It may mean changes to what
    > >>SIL, UniScribe, and others are doing, but there's no free
    > lunch here.
    > >>
    > >>
    > >>
    > >>
    > As a native speaker of English, I certainly think of th and gh as
    > sequences of two glyphs, not as indivisible combinations, so
    > that is the
    > difference here.
    >
    > But a better example might be French e, e acute and e grave.
    > These are
    > three separate letters which need three different ways to
    > encode them.
    > Whether the accented versions are encoded as one character or two is
    > unimportant as long as they are distinct. Similarly we have three
    > letters, vav on its own, vav with right holam and vav with
    > left holam,
    > and so we need three ways of encoding them.
    >
    > As for the character name, I am forced to consider these entirely
    > meaningless except for being unique and stable, as UTC has refused to
    > correct demonstrable mistakes in these names, including at least one
    > Hebrew accent. So I would actually prefer to use a meaningless random
    > string of characters because at least that is more or less guaranteed
    > not to be misleading.
    >
    > --
    > Peter Kirk
    > peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com
    > http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
    >
    >
    >
    >



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