Re: Arabic cursive in Unicode


Ruud Harmsen wrote:
21 Nov 2006 20:33:38 -0800: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

I mean exactly what I think you think I mean :) I mean the four (or
two, or one) variants of a letter (or ligature) that are displayed
according to its position within a word. I'm pretty sure the term is
the one used by Unicode - I was reminded to use it by Andreas' post.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you mean. "Presentation form" is not
a term used in the study of writing systems, or of Arabic, or in
typography.

But it is in Unicode. http://rudhar.com/lingtics/uniclnks.htm
0600 is Arabic, FB50 is Arabic Presentation Forms-A and FE70 is Arabic
Presentation Forms-B. The question may be: should these be used, and
if so, how?

As far as I can see, the answer is that the logical (0600) characters
should be used for data storage (eg a digital file) while the
presentation forms should be used for display (print or screen). The
logical characters only have a visual form for convenience.

Danny

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