From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sat Apr 09 2005 - 08:06:57 CST
From: "John Hudson" <tiro@tiro.com>
> Philippe VERDY wrote:
> > But then, isn't the circle form an alternative for this digit, and a
> > candidate for
> > adding a variant of it, looking like LETTER TTHA (using a variant
> > selector)?
>
> The world is full of variant glyph forms and most do not have and will not
> have variant selector sequences. The latter is a mechanism that is only
> very occasionally necessary or useful. The vast majority of variant glyph
> forms can be addressed at the glyph processing level, e.g. by selecting an
> appropriate font or by enabling stylistic alternates through smart font
> features, either of which would work for possible variant forms of the
> Malayalam zero.
Would that still be true if there exists some legacy text in the transition
period, where a written number sequence like "85(1/2)" that includes the
one-half glyph ambigously means "85.5" or "850"?
In that case, this cannot be solved at the glyph processing level, because
this is subject to human interpretation. In that case, the variant
explicitly says that the one-half glyph is used, and probably means zero,
but for accuracy the original one-half glyph is kept...
I am not discussing the introduction of stylistic variants, but a possible
variant needed only because the ambiguity of semantic of the glyph to
encode. If one blindly replaces the glyph of this bogous ZERO digit, may be
this will break those texts that actually meant the one-half glyph which
probably means zero.
Adding this variant could be done independantly before a more complete
update will include a new set of fraction numbers for Malayalam (and other
scripts...)
Also, I think that the new reference glyph for zero should be near from the
existing letter t.ha (i.e. the circle boldened on its right side, and very
thin or slighly open on the left side), possibly a bit flattened
horizontally to make it still recognizable from the letter, and to better
fit with the dimensions of other figures. From the various documents that
discussed this digit, it seems that this digit is flattened this way.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Apr 09 2005 - 08:07:43 CST