Re: [idn] ZWNJ

[Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh@sharif.edu>]

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, James Seng/Personal wrote:

> Arabic alphabets put together may have different rendering forms depends
> whether there is a break between the alphabets or not. But it is not
> neccessary a 'space' because there is no gap. Someone told me that ZWNJ
> was suggested as a way to insert this break without adding a space altho
> that was not the reason ZWNJ was there in the first place.

You have some idea. The ZWNJ is actually used in languages like Persian,
which are not Arabic (language) based, but only use the Arabic script.
Since in this languages the words are longer than Arabic words, and there
is a need to separate parts of the word. Consider the case of German:
those long words are really hard to read. Add the Arabic joinging to this,
you will surely have problems finding subword boundaries. Persian
typography then introduced ZWNJ (which is called semi-space in Persian
traditional typography) to break the words so they become readable.

<off-topic>
There are still a bunch of Nastaliq calligraphers, who do not
use the ZWNJ, to be able to create long long words which gives the
calligrapher the ability to play with the slanted baseline. People
consider this to be artistic.
</off-topic>

> btw, can arabic keyboard actually enter ZWNJ? I am asking because I
> could not find a way to do so.

On Persian keyboards, this is usally on Shift+Space (or Shift+B when the
OS can't handle the Shift+Space combination). Microsoft keyboards do not
support it, but if you're using Windows 2000, all the Arabic keyboards and
the Persian keyboard have it on Ctrl+Shift+2 (why there, don't ask me).

roozbeh