This argumentation applies equally well to th (which should be at least two
Unicodes in English), gh (how many?), etc.
It doesn't.
There is normally no difference in appearance of the text for the _th_ in _thin_, _then_ and _fronthand_. There is normally no difference in apearance of _gh_ in _ghost_, _tough_ and _through_.
Accordingly the argumentation used for Hebrew variants of vav with holam does not at all apply equally well.
The reason for the discussion is there *is* a traditional consistant difference in the appearance of Hebrew vav with holam.
One expects any difference in appearance corresponding to a difference in pronunciation to be encoded at the plain text level (unless the difference can *always* be algorithmically derived).
If there were a language using the Latin alphabet that did make a graphic distinction between _th_ with two different pronunciations then I would expect Unicode to encode this, especially if the the distinction for forms were found to have been practised for over a thousand years and to still be observed in careful typography today.
Jim Allan
