On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote:
> But doesn't ALEF MAKSURA appear mostly at the end of words, i.e. in its
> final or isolated forms?
It does, but that is the Arabic. A normal Persian Yeh is used in Persian
contexts. For example, both words "ali" and "kobraa" should be written
(and encoded in Unicode) using a Persian Yeh.
> What's more, in Arabic, when you add a personal suffix (etc.) to ALEF
> MAKSURA, it will assume medial/initial forms *with dots*...
This is probably a bug in your software, or just it being old. Alef
Maksura was only a right-joining character until Unicode 3.0 (like Reh,
Dal, ...), and it got changed to a dual-joining character in Unicode
3.0.1.
> I wonder where you have drawn the border line between Unicode characters
> that are used only in Koranic texts, and other symbols such as
> cantillation marks or calligraphic elements such as U+FDF4, U+FDFA,
> U+FDFB, etc. (these Unicode values are given for reference only, not
> because I advocate making Arabic presentation forms available via direct
> keyboard input).
We don't draw any line. We have just put some of them on the main keys and
the others on AltGr based on frequence and other concerns, based on what a
Persian typist usually sees in her day's pile of work.
> Traditionally, there have been special calligraphic fonts for all these
> add-on characters but they weren't easy to handle. I wonder whether it
> would not make sense to design a special (extended) keyboard for them,
> which may go hand-in-hand with the creation of suitable OT fonts. Are
> there any efforts made in this direction?
Not any that I know of. (Although I don't even know if this is a good
thing to do.)
> Lastly, a question related to the SHIFT+8 key: It's presently ASTERISK
> (U+002A, but wouldn't it be more appropriate for Farsi context to use
> this position for the ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR (U+066D) symbol, and move
> the ASTERISK somewhere else, e.g. to ALT+8? Strangely, the ARABIC FIVE
> POINTED STAR symbol has *six* points in Arial Unicode MS and *eight*
> points in Tahoma. How comes? :-)
Ok, let's start with a little bit of history: the whole reason there is a
five-pointed Arabic star, is that some hardline Muslims belived that *any*
six-pointed star resembles the Jewish *Star of David*, and so insisted on
using a five-pointed one. This was not only them. Actually the same had
happened with Jews and a much more frequent symbol, the *plus sign*
itself. Some hardline Jews considered that a cross, and thus a symbol of
Christianity. So, even these days, some of the Israeli school books are
published with another addition symbol, one that looks like a normal plus
sign with the bottom like ommitted, something like a "is perpendicular to"
symobl:
|
--+--
In Iran, typographers almost always use the six-pointed star to, say,
separate unrelated paragraphs (where usually three is used). Thus,
fortunately because of the lack of such hardliners (or them being unaware
of this concept), we have the more standard six-pointed one in the typeset
books and on the layout.
An exhausted roozbeh
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