meteg positioning problem

Peter_Constable at sil.org Peter_Constable at sil.org
Tue Dec 17 17:23:22 EST 2002



On 12/17/2002 04:18:37 PM Patrick Durusau wrote:

>>My question is this: do Biblical Hebrew experts want a way to encode
these
>>distinctions in Unicode? (It currently does not provide any means for
>>this.)
>>
>Is the "not any means for this" because  in Unicode, meteg, 05BD, is
>"left attached (reordrant around single base character)?"

You've got the basic idea. The strict details are that meteg and vowels all
are assigned to unique "fixed position" canonical combining classes. The
implication of this is that there is no way to distinguish two different
visual orders for a given pair of these in encoded representation --
they're all canonically equivalent. So, for instance, < 05BD, 05B0 > is
canonically equivalent to < 05B0, 05BD >.


>Based on the evidence
>you cite, should this be reported as a "bug" in Unicode?

Unfortunately, bugs in canonical combining classes cannot generally be
fixed (due to policies on stability of the standard legislated by the Board
of Directors of the Unicode Consortium -- apparently, even the Unicode
Technical Committee's hands are tied on this point). I've been trying to
find alternative solutions (and have been discussing this with John Hudson
at Tiro and Paul Nelson at MS since they are also working on
implementations), but it isn't easy. The point of this query, though, is to
get feedback from the user community confirming that it is a felt need.



>BTW, wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all at SIL.

Thanks. Will do. (At least, I'll pass on the greetings to those whom I
think you know; "one and all at SIL" is a lot of people most of whom I
doubt you've met :-)


- Peter


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Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485






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