Re: ZWJ/ZWNJ in combining mark sequences

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Wed Nov 05 2003 - 15:12:06 EST

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    On 05/11/2003 11:11, Language Analysis Systems, Inc. Unicode list reader
    wrote:

    >>Here are my suggestions for Really Stoopid but unquestionably
    >>
    >>
    >conformant, needs-no-new-characters-can-be
    >
    >
    >>made-to-work-today, alternatives:
    >>
    >>Medial meteg: < CGJ, hataf patah, CGJ, meteg >
    >>or
    >>Medial meteg: <hataf patah, CGJ, CGJ, meteg >
    >>
    >>
    >
    >I should probably know better than to jump into this discussion,
    >especially since I really don't know anything about Biblical Hebrew, but
    >I could have sworn that this had been discussed here before. ...
    >
    Yes, you are right. We started discussion on the main Unicode list, and
    then moved on to the separate Hebrew list. Discussion has continued on
    and off, mainly on the Hebrew list, and should really continue only
    there. Rich, you are welcome to join us there.

    >... I thought
    >what I remembered people saying was that the medial meteg was the
    >high-runner case and the versions with the meteg on either side were the
    >exceptions. If that were true, you'd get
    >
    >Medial meteg: < hataf patah, meteg >
    >Left meteg: < hataf patah, CGJ, meteg >
    >Right meteg: < meteg, CGJ, hataf patah >
    >
    >Simple enough, if it makes any sense linguistically.
    >
    >
    I proposed this some months ago for the same reason. I think there were
    two objections. One is that medial meteg is the high-runner in only some
    texts, but in other versions of the same text only left meteg is used.
    But that is more a difference of typographic convention. I looked at
    this one in a posting to the Hebrew list today, which I will forward to
    you. The other objection is that CGJ is not supposed to affect the
    appearance of the text. But if it does not, we need another character
    which does, but which can also appear between two combining characters.

    >The discussion here seems to be suggesting that the left meteg is the
    >high-runner case. If this is the case, my own uninformed opinion would
    >be that you'd probably have to encode a new character. Using CGJ to
    >encode the distinction in either of the ways shown above seems to be
    >stretching the use of CGJ a little too far, and sticking ZWJ in the
    >middle of a combining character sequence seems to open the door to bad
    >things. You could, I guess, encode left meteg as <hataf patah, meteg>
    >and medial meteg as <hataf patah, CGJ, meteg>, but this doesn't seem
    >very intuitive.
    >
    >I'll shut up now...
    >
    >--Rich Gillam
    > Language Analysis Systems, Inc.
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >

    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter@qaya.org (personal)
    peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    http://www.qaya.org/
    


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