It is very interesting to me that there does seem to have been a glyph distinction (though a very subtle one) between sin and shin, in the "serech" example (http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/programs/Altman/serech.jpg) of what is undoubtedly (in Unicode terms) Hebrew script. If this distinction can be verified a case can be made for encoding a separate HEBREW LETTER SIN, equivalent to shin with sin dot. But it is difficult to verify this when three scribes within the same document make the distinction in three different ways.
Even if it were verified, it isn't a good case for encoding a separate character *equivalent* to a combination of two existing characters: that's a glyph variant ligature.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What was venerated as style was nothing more than
an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
- Orhan Pamuk, _My name is red_
