At 10:26 AM 10/29/2003, Philippe Verdy wrote:
The problem I see here is that ZWJ is not intended to create ligatures
between diacritics, only between clusters that would otherwise still be a
single combining sequence.
Normally CGJ would have fitted better there, but this conflicts with the
intent to address the canonical combining order with CGJ.
It also conflicts with the expectation that CGJ will *not* affect rendering. ZWJ is intended to affect rendering, which is why it makes more sense than CGJ, but I agree that, as currently defined, it does not seem to be intended to create ligatures between combining marks. However, I recall Paul Nelson at MS stating that they also needed ZWJ to work between combining marks for another script (Khmer perhaps?). This suggests to me that either the definition of ZWJ and ZWNJ needs to be revised, or a new ZERO-WIDTH COMBINING MARK JOINER needs to be encoded.
Or the definition of CGJ needs to be revised - unless of course there are existing uses which conflict with this. The advantage of CGJ over ZWJ is that the latter is defined as a base character.
While we're about it, we could propose a spacing, non-breaking ELIDED CHARACTER for use in ketiv/qere where combining marks need to be applied to empty space within a word.
How would this differ from NBSP? Now if it were a right-to-left character specifically for RTL scripts, that would help. But failing that one can safely use <RLM, NBSP>.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I sometimes think that good readers are as singular, and as awesome, as great authors themselves. - JL Borges
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/