[XeTeX] RTL (Arabic) preferred diacritics typing sequence

[Gregg Reynolds]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Juan Acevedo
<juan.acevedo.juan at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I have unfortunately forgotten, and now fail to find the answer to this
> basic RTL text question:
>
> Talking about inputing Arabic Unicode text, what is the preferred input
> typing sequence, to obtain a better final output?; here is a case:
>
> The word "al-.hayyu" (لحيُّ) ends with ya-shadda-damma
> No matter my typing sequence, the rendering will be the same (damma on top
> of shadda),
>

That would be an error.  See Unicode 5.2 Section 2.11, p. 43.  For Arabic in
particular, section 8.2, p. 240:  "The Unicode Standard does not specify a
sequence order in case of multiple harakat applied to the same Arabic base
character, as there is no possible ambiguity of interpretation."


>
> Similar cases include combinations that involve shadda+tanwin combinations,
> like
> ".hayyaN" (حيًّا)
>

Proper sequencing is tanween, then alif, but unfortunately the reverse order
is more common even in the Arab world, due to the incorrect notion that the
alif is the "seat" of the tanween.

It's not just about typesetting but also about search.

-gregg
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/attachments/20091215/7bb8d877/attachment.html>