New property for reordrant dependent vowels reordering?

From: Kent Karlsson (kent.karlsson14@comhem.se)
Date: Sat Sep 03 2005 - 17:20:38 CDT

  • Next message: Richard Wordingham: "Re: New property for reordrant dependent vowels reordering?"

    As yet, Unicode does not have any character properties for
    how reordrant (combining) characters reorder. I would suggest
    that such a property is introduced. To explain the property
    values for this suggested new property, first define "extend
    combining sequence".

    An extended combining sequence is a combining sequence where
    one considers any base character that occurs after a virama
    (cc=9; even if other truly combining characters intervene)
    as combining.

    I would suggest having the following property values, with their
    meanings, for the reordrant property:

    R0: Non-reordrant. (This is not to be listed explicitly in the
        prospective data file, most characters have this value
        for the reordrant property).

    R1: Move to the left of the preceding combining sequence.
        (This is similar to combining class 224 in placement of the
        glyph, but these ones are not moved by canonical ordering
        of combining marks since they have combining class 0.)

    R2: Split; move the left part to the left of the preceding
        combining sequence.

    R3: Move to the left of the preceding *extended* combining
        sequence. (This is for the case where the pre-vowel is
        displayed to the left of the entire orthographic syllable.)

    R4: Split; move the left part to the left of the preceding
        *extended* combining sequence.

    The "moves" here are pre-display moves, just like for bidi.
    The underlying character sequence is not affected.

    It is not yet clear if <super> and <sub> digits should be moved
    over as well, which has been suggested.

    However, from the examples given, it appears like any <super>
    and <sub> digits occur only *after* the full orthographic
    (Tamil) syllable. If that is always the case, the rules above
    would not be affected.

    If instead <super> and <sub> digits do occur inside an orthographic
    syllable, as has been suggested, but no evidence yet given, the rules
    for reordrant properties R1-R4 (or perhaps just for R1 and R2) would
    need to be extended (by, for these rules, considering also <super>
    and <sub> digits to be combining) to also indicate a move over
    <super> and <sub> digits. Obviously, any <super> and <sub> digits
    inside an orthographic syllable would break any ligature/conjunct
    formation.

                    /Kent K



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