[alreq] Does a final KASHMIRI YEH have a circle below it in Naskh style fonts? (#271)

r12a has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/alreq:

== Does a final KASHMIRI YEH have a circle below it in Naskh style fonts? ==
In Nastaliq style text, KASHMIRI YEH has the following positional forms:

![kashmiri_yeh](https://github.com/w3c/alreq/assets/4839211/cf57ff50-eb21-4c5b-9bae-2cc93a22f2c9)

The circle appears below the left-joining and dual-joining glyphs, but does not appear below the right-joining and isolate glyphs.

Some documents appear to indicate that all positional forms have a circle below when the text is rendered in Naskh style.  These include:

1. the Unicode Standard, v15 pp 391-392 and 392-393 and the reference glyph in the charts
2. PASCII (Perso-Arabic Standard for Information Interchange) Version 1.0 (which influenced the Unicode text)
3. occasional articles talking about Kashmiri, such as [this one]https://www.kau.edu.sa/Files/611/Researches/62787_33808.pdf) (these are not usually reliable sources of authoritative information)

In all of these sources the text is in the Naskh style and isolate form and the base character looks like FARSI YEH: the only distinguishing factor for the isolate form between KASHMIRI YEH and FARSI YEH is the presence of the circle below.

This is also the way the isolate KASHMIRI YEH glyph is represented in the Noto naskh fonts.
 
<img width="75" alt="Screenshot 2023-11-07 at 13 47 46" src="https://github.com/w3c/alreq/assets/4839211/d9d45801-9457-4c46-b9ad-13b50eeb671f">

In SIL's Scheherazade New font, however, the base shapes are differentiated in a way similar to the nastaliq forms.

<img width="97" alt="Screenshot 2023-11-07 at 13 50 08" src="https://github.com/w3c/alreq/assets/4839211/20df4866-c663-4fa0-91f4-4f06847875e8">

Kashmiri text written in naskh style is not very common, and i haven't seen this in the wild in actual text.

The question is whether the information in the Unicode Standard about the naskh isolate form having a circle below is correct?

Or is this perhaps something that originated because authors cited above didn't have an appropriate glyph for KASHMIRI YEH (added to Unicode in v6.0 (late 2010) and used this as a device to distinguish KASHMIRI and FARSI YEH glyph shapes in their charts?



Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/271 using your GitHub account


-- 
Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config

Received on Tuesday, 7 November 2023 13:59:30 UTC