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From: Joel Salomon <joelcsalomon@gma...>
Subject: combining characters
Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 13:52:11 -0400

On 5/19/06, quanstro@qua... <quanstro@qua...> wrote:
> On Fri May 19 17:55:50 CDT 2006, joelcsalomon@gma... wrote:
> > Take Hebrew, for instance: 27 letters (including the 5 final forms) +
> > a few alternate forms, 15 vowel marks, 25+ cantillation marks --
> > that's more than 10,000 combinations right there.
>
> i don't know hebrew very well, but are you confusing glyphs with characters?
>
> for example arabic has three letter forms: initial, final and medial.
> (there is a different shape for the the same letter at the beginning, middle
> and end of the word.)
>
> so in arabic, a good renderer would need three glyphs for each codepoint.

Hebrew final forms are not much of a problem; they are separate
characters, typed with different keys.  It's the vowel marks needed
sometimes (whn yu cnnt nfr th vwls frm cntxt) and the cantillation
marks needed for Biblical text that make for the code space explosion.

Arabic text rendering—for readable plain text, not just for "fancy"
typesetting—requires yet another clever set of algorithms.

I don't know that there's a way to manage this complexity without
giving "fonts" their own context-aware programming language, like
TrueType.

--Joel

-- 
It reverses the normal flow of conversation.
> What's wrong with top-posting?
> > Top-posting.
> > > What's the biggest scourge on plain text email discussions?