Idna-update Digest, Vol 27, Issue 100

[Sarmad Hussain]

We have developed numerous fonts for Urdu and other Pakistani languages, in
Nastalique, Naskh, and Riqa styles (Nafees family of fonts) and Tatweel is
not used either for Nastalique style fonts (with diagonal baseline) or with
Naskh and Riqa style fonts (with horizontal baseline).  Tatweel could used
as a justification tool for Arabic script (though even that is not
required), thus not necessary for font development.  It is not a character,
but just an invented formatting character.  It has no linguistic reality or
necessity.

Regards,
Sarmad




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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: consensus Call: TATWEEL (Martin J. D?rst)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:12:53 +0900
From: "Martin J. D?rst" <duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp>
Subject: Re: consensus Call: TATWEEL
To: Ebw <ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>
Cc: Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>,	"idna-update at alvestrand.no"
	<idna-update at alvestrand.no>,	John C Klensin <klensin at jck.com>
Message-ID: <49CF2D85.7010206 at it.aoyama.ac.jp>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Hello Eric,

I understand you are concerned that Tatweel might be needed for the
ability to render Arabic script in a falling rather than horizontal
style, and that there might be other 'characters' needed for high-
quality rendering.

As far as I understand from Tom Milo, a top expert in Arabic typography
implementations, really good Arabic typography requires a lot of 
contextual rules. But he never mentioned the Tatweel.

The more I think about it, the more I actually get the impression that 
the Tatweel is very much linked to horizontal/linear Arabic rendering,
and not of much use if any for falling or other higher-level kinds
of renderings. Even for horizontal rendering, the Tatweel is nothing
more than a crude clutch, as Ken already said.

Regards,    Martin.

On 2009/03/23 8:25, Ebw wrote:
> John,
>
> It is clear from your response that you didn't see where my concern
> lies. If, in our choices of allowable code points, we constrain Arabic
> (and Farsi and ...) to choices which look correct to Latin
> expectations, non-descending rather than descending, inaesthetically
> dense rather than combining and extended, to "2nd gen" computer Arabic
> (and ...) -- then we may be "solving" one problem by creating another.
>
> The choice of which "harm" to choose is easy if all we know is one
> "harm", and easier when that "harm" is "spoofing" (or last year's
> child porn or the year before that's Arab terrorist or the year before
> that's WMD), but we do have the choice to ask if the people who create
> the basic tools for writing Arabic (and ...) need what we are asked to
> ban, and because of our shared Latin (and other scripts lacking one or
> both of the properties, descent and vertical and horizontal
> interaction) limitations, simply fail to appreciate.
>
> If you really do think this is "bold" and "italic" you simply aren't
> getting it.
>
> Eric
>
> Sent from my iPhone, painfully.
>
> On Mar 22, 2009, at 3:41 PM, John C Klensin<klensin at jck.com>  wrote:
>
>>
>> --On Sunday, March 22, 2009 11:43 -0500 Ebw
>> <ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>  wrote:
>>
>>> ...
>>> I propose we ask modern (3rd gen) Arabic (and Farsi, etc)
>>> typographers   for guidance. I'm not certain the UTC
>>> motivation is sufficient, nor am   I certain the ASIWG, the
>>> process of which I find insufficiently   trasparent, and
>>> unacceptably vendor-specific, hasn't overlooked use in   their
>>> excessively narrow construction of text labels as "necessary
>>> words" with the excessive constraints arise from the incorrect
>>> statement of purpose.
>> Eric,
>>
>> "Consult typographers" sets off an alarm for me.   Unicode isn't
>> supposed to be about typography and certainly domain names
>> historically have not been.   If we do get ourselves into a
>> situation in which we are consulting typographers, don't we need
>> to go back and examine the list of Unicode compatibility
>> characters  --many of which seem to be about typographic and
>> other subtle variations on base characters -- to figure out
>> which ones the typographers think should be distinguishable
>> characters (not mapped or prohibited)?
>>
>> For example, I would certainly like boldface and italics in my
>> domain names, even though I recognize that they would cause far
>> more confusion and problems than they could possibly be worth.
>> I'd also like to be able to utilize the full range of variations
>> and artistry in, e.g., Arabic and Chinese calligraphy.  And I'd
>> like a pony :-(
>>
>> Vint,
>>
>> Yes. I agree with disallowing Tatweel and its N'Ko counterpart.
>> I do not believe that we should disallow one and not the other.
>>
>>     john
>>
>>
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