[xep-support] XEP with Arabic Typesetting font

[Mete Kural]

Hello Chris,

Thanks for the information. I am attaching some
examples of these complex script renderings from the
Quran. One of the files that I am attaching is a plain
Unicode text file and I am also attaching four image
files scanned from a hardcopy Quran that show the
rendering.

1) In verses 2:33 and 2:35, the 2nd word "yaaadamo",
the Hamza should be coded as "0621" (unlike the 2nd
word in 2:33 and the 11th word in 2:35, where the
"0654" above the Yaa is the correct encoding)
2) In verse 2:39, the 4th word "beaayaatenaa" should
be coded with "0621"
3) In verse 2:48, the 7th word "shayaan" should be
coded with "0621"

For a rendering engine to accomplish this sort of
complex script rendering is a high specialty task. I
would recommend that if XEP wishes to support complex
Arabic script rendering, they integrate with a
sophisticated rendering engine instead of developing
one from scratch.

Kind Regards,
Mete

--- Chris Lilley <chris at w3.org> wrote:
> On Friday, February 20, 2004, 3:03:40 PM, Nikolai
> wrote:
> 
> NG> Mete,
> 
> >> Is XEP capable of rendering a Lam-Alef ligature 
> >> with a hamza and possibly also a fatha on top of
> it?
> 
> NG> Treatment of hamza, fatha  and similar
> diacritical 
> NG> signs is indeed a hard issue for XEP in its
> current shape.
> 
> NG> XEP process combining diacritics as if the were 
> NG> ordinary symbols. Therefore, to get an
> Alef+hamza,
> NG>  you should use a separate glyph for it
> (Ã).
> NG> This glyph will be correctly shaped to
> isolated/initial
> NG> or medial/final form, and if there is a Lam
> preceding 
> NG> it in the text, it will produce a correct
> Lam+Alef+hamza 
> NG> ligature.
> 
> Am I correct to infer from this that XEP has support
> for only
> precombined characters in general, so that for
> example a latin letter
> 'e' followed by a combining acute accent will not
> render as an
> 'e-acute'?
> 
> NG> For fatha, the situation is more difficult:
> there is no 
> NG> Unicode point to cover its combinations with
> Alef
> NG> or Alef+hamza.
> 
> Since Unicode has a policy of not adding new
> precomposed characters
> unless really necessary (because of the
> multiplicative explosion of
> code points), there is unlikely to be such a
> codepoint in the future
> either. Nor is it needed, there are already Unicode
> points for fatha,
> damma, kasra etc and these are, naturally, combining
> characters.
> 
> Unlike the acute accent (in French) but like the
> accents and tone
> marks in Vietnamese, these characters also need to
> stack.
> 
> 
> NG> Rather than adding such an API, we would better
> prefer to refine
> NG> our own engine to cover complex cases like these
> :-).
> 
> A worthy goal, although coverage of basic newspaper
> Arabic is
> probably a better first target before moving on the
> the complexities
> of Quranic typesetting.
> 
> Does anyone have short examples of these sorts of
> more complex script
> renderings (plus images of correct renderings),
> which could be used
> for test cases? I am thinking of XSL FO test cases
> of course, though
> also interested in their use for SVG test cases.
> 
> -- 
>  Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris at w3.org
>  Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
>  Member, W3C Technical Architecture Group
> 
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