Date:Fri, 17 Feb 2006 22:41:04 EST
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From:James Agenbroad <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:Greek Decomposition? Arabic Decomposition?
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Friday, February 17, 2006
It occurs to me that few if any MARC-8 systems can handle Greek script
though it is in he MARC character repertoire. In Unicode 4.0 on page 583 Greek
script has a great many precomposed letter + diacritic combinations. It might
not be worth defining their decomposition. Alternatively I suppose if the
Unicode software already exists the savings by its omission would not be great.
The Arabic presentation forms as found on pages 988-901 and 925 contain both
positional versions of letters--initial, medial, final and alone--and
combinations of letters. If found in Unicode MARC records for conversion to MARC-8,
the former would need conversion to the canonical form of the letter and the
latter would need decomposition. This too may be dealt with adequately in
Unicode software but, if not one wonders if the benefits justify the effort.
These are just some thought after pondering the latin script
decompostion for a while.
Regards,
Jim Agenbroad ( [log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask])
)
