Why do the Hebrew Alphabetic Presentation Forms Exist

[Richard Wordingham]

On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 20:53:31 +0100
Michael Everson via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:

> Doesn’t it matter _why_ they are bent?
> 
> > On 8 Jun 2020, at 22:02, Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode
> > <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Down to one sentence: until you can talk about which LAMEDs in the
> > Torah are bent and which are straight, I would expect this to be a
> > non-starter.  

Yes, it does.  It seems that they are bent so that they don't clash
with the line above.  Changing the line breaks or even changing the
relative widths of the characters will change which ones get bent.
Being bent is an attribute of glyphs in laid out text, rather than an
attribute of characters in a sequence of characters.

That is why mention of ODT files is relevant.  I'm not sure what one
has to do to stop an ODT file reflowing.  I suspect one may have to
freeze a lot of the rendering chain to stop reflowing.

Richard.