Scripts in the current list of codepoints

[Cary Karp]

Perhaps we can now take a look at the way the Hebrew script is being
handled?

The table currently excludes the U+05F3 HEBREW PUNCTUATION GERESH and
the U+05F4 HEBREW PUNCTUATION GERSHAYIM. Although it is reassuring to
note that we recognize the fundamental role they play in Hebrew and
Ladino orthographies, and the likelihood of their appearing in the
exception table, I am a bit more concerned about the main table
permitting the U+059C HEBREW ACCENT GERESH and the U+059E HEBREW ACCENT
GERSHAYIM. The latter pair, along with the other 28 HEBREW ACCENTs
strike me as prime examples of what we explicitly need to be excluding.

We also all seem to recognize that a healthy amount of language-based
tweaking is going to be done at the registry level (please note the
distinction between "registry" and "registrar"), but that protocol level
constraint is needed on the scope of the policies that can be
implemented. (Why else are we having this discussion?). Given the
nomenclatural and graphic similarities between the two forms of GERESH
and GERSHAYIM, there is an obvious risk that our permitting the wrong
ones, but excluding the right ones, will be taken as a reasoned
statement of what registry practice should be.

Can the rules, or the sequence of their application be modified to
include the two characters that are missing, or are we stuck with
allowing the dozens of characters that are not needed for IDN, and
treating the remaining two as exceptions?  One alternative would be
simply to permit all Hebrew characters in the range 0591..05F4. (At
least one of the three characters that would thereby be reintroduced,
U+05BE HEBREW PUNCTUATION MAQAF, can be justified in its own right.)
This would make nothing substantially worse, and would at least call
registry attention to the fact that there are different kinds of geresh.

Better still would be to enable registries only to accept the characters
for which warrant can be demonstrated, and to block all the others.
Finally, given the disparate opinions about the IPA extensions already
voiced on this list, I don't see how the registries can be adequately
supported without our making a similarly detailed enforced inventory of
the IPA need'ems and don'ts.

/Cary