Another consequence is that it separates the sequence into two combining sequences, not one. Don't know if this is a serious problem, especially since we are concerned with a limited domain with non-modern usage, but I wanted to mention it.
Mark __________________________________ http://www.macchiato.com ► “Eppur si muove” ◄ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kenneth Whistler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 13:41 Subject: Re: Biblical Hebrew (Was: Major Defect in Combining Classes of Tibetan Vowels) > Peter replied to Karljürgen: > > > Karljürgen Feuerherm wrote on 06/25/2003 08:31:41 PM: > > > > > I was going to suggest something very similar, a ZW-pseudo-consonant of > > some > > > kind, which would force each vowel to be associated with one consonant. > > > > An invisible *consonant* doesn't make sense because the problem involves > > more than just multiple written vowels on one consonant; > > I agree that we don't want to go inventing invisible consonants for > this. > > BTW, there's already an invisible vowel (in fact a pair of them) > that is unwanted by the stakeholders of the script it was > originally invented for: > > U+17B4 KHMER VOWEL INHERENT AQ > > This is also (cc=0), so would serve to block canonical reordering > if placed between two Hebrew vowel points. But I'm sure that if > Peter thought the suggestion of the ZWJ for this was a "groanable > kludge", Biblical Hebraicists would probably not take lightly > to the importation of an invisible Khmer character into their > text representations. ;-) > > > in fact, that is > > a small portion of the general problem. If we want such a character, it > > would notionally be a zero-width-canonical-ordering-inhibiter, and nothing > > more. > > The fact is that any of the zero-width format controls has the > side-effect of inhibiting (or rather interrupting) canonical reordering > if inserted in the middle of a target sequence, because of their > own class (cc=0). > > I'm not particularly campaigning for ZWJ, by the way. ZWNJ or even > U+FEFF ZWNBSP would accomplish the same. I just suggested ZWJ because > it seemed in the ballpark. ZWNBSP would likely have fewer possible > other consequences, since notionally it means just "don't break here", > which you wouldn't do in the middle of a Hebrew combining character > sequence, anyway. > > > And I don't particular want to think about what happens when people start > > sticking this thing into sequences other than Biblical Hebrew ("in > > unicode, any sequence is legal"). > > But don't forget that these cc=0 zero width format controls already > can be stuck into sequences other than Biblical Hebrew. In some > instances they have defined semantics there (as for Arabic and > Indic scripts), but in all cases they would *already* have the > effect of interrupting canonical reordering of combining character > sequences if inserted there. > > --Ken > > > >
