Re: kurdish sorani

From: Andries Brouwer (aebr@win.tue.nl)
Date: Tue Aug 29 2006 - 19:29:47 CDT

  • Next message: Kenneth Whistler: "Re: kurdish sorani"

    On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 03:43:58PM -0700, John Hudson wrote:
    > Andries Brouwer wrote:
    >
    >> Uyghur H uses two shapes: "initial Heh" in isolated and
    >> initial position, and "medial Heh" in medial and final position.
    >
    >> How would you describe current Uyghur H shaping?
    >
    > my disagreement is in the distinction you make between the
    > Uighur h shaping and the Urdu two-eye heh shaping. My research
    > indicates that these shape the same way.
    >
    > http://www.tiro.com/John/UighurShaping.gif

    Good! Thank you.

    Your image agrees with my description of Uyghur shaping. Good.
    Concerning Urdu shaping, the contexts you show it in seem
    rather unnatural - Urdu double-eyed h is the second symbol
    of combinations where it indicates aspiration. The nashtaliq font
    one always sees used for Urdu has a descending "waterfall" type
    typography and I am not used to seeing the same shape used medially
    and finally, unless the font is such that all four shapes are
    essentially the same. So, I am a bit unhappy with the Urdu line
    on your picture. Now you point me to

    > http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/temp/two-eyed-he.html6

    Unfortunately, that link is meaningless to me. It is not a picture
    but a HTML file, and hence does not show any particular shapes that
    the author wanted to show, but the shapes that happen to be present
    on the installed fonts on my computer. I see six identical lines there.

    >> 2) You were silent about the Kurdish part. Do you have an opinion
    >> about the correct treatment of Kurdish H?
    >
    > No, although the use of a control character might be necessary based on
    > your description. I believe there is a similar situation for one Persian
    > letter.

    OK. (I would prefer a new code point. I am not quite sure what Persian
    letter you might refer to, but sometimes one wants a nonstandard
    joining behaviour and then can force that using ZWJ or ZWNJ.
    But that is the fine-tuning for a few specific wordcombinations.
    To use ZWNJ for letters of the alphabet is a really ugly solution.)

    Andries



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