Re: No Invisible Character - NBSP at the start of a word

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Sat Nov 27 2004 - 18:21:48 CST

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    Jony Rosenne wrote:

    >
    >
    >>-----Original Message-----
    >>From: Doug Ewell [mailto:dewell@adelphia.net]
    >>Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 11:28 PM
    >>To: Unicode Mailing List
    >>Cc: Jony Rosenne; Peter Kirk
    >>Subject: Re: No Invisible Character - NBSP at the start of a word
    >>
    >>
    >>Jony Rosenne <rosennej at qsm dot co dot il> wrote:
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>>Normal printed text is hardly ever plain text. It contains headings,
    >>>highlighted phrases, paragraphs etc.
    >>>
    >>>
    >>Headings and highlighted text, when stripped of their formatting, are
    >>still legible, and paragraph boundaries can usually be indicated in
    >>plain text.
    >>
    >>One useful litmus (or lackmus) test for this Hebrew example would be
    >>whether the text in question is still legible, with its original
    >>meaning, when reduced to plain text representable in today's Unicode.
    >>If the special Ketiv/Qere handling is needed only because It Is The
    >>Word, and This Is How It Was Written, then this is probably a
    >>paleographic distinction and out of scope for plain text. If it
    >>genuinely changes the spelling, that is another matter.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >One of the problems in this context is the phrase "original meaning". What
    >we have is a juxtaposition of two words, which is indicated by writing the
    >letters of one with the vowels of the other. In many cases this does not
    >cause much of a problem, because the vowels fit the letters, but sometimes
    >they do not. Except for the most frequent cases, there normally is a note in
    >the margin with the alternate letters - I hope everyone agrees that notes in
    >the margin are not plain text.
    >
    >
    >
    Well, that's the difference under discussion. The "plain text" would
    seem to be either the qere or the ketiv (but not the combined "blended"
    form), since each of those is somewhat sensible. Peter Kirk's point is
    that the blended form is what is in fact written and has been so for
    centuries, so he claims that *it* should be considered the plain text.

    ~mark

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