HEBREW HE-WITH-ADNY-INSIDE

[Mark E. Shoulson]

Wow, not a peep about this?  Surely a group this opinionated would have 
something to say.  I guess I should propose this, since it's in use?  
Probably would have a compatibility equivalence to just plain HEBREW 
LETTER HE.

~mark

On 4/1/24 17:39, Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode wrote:
> Looking waaaay back to my opus (with Michael Everson) of 1998, 
> http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1740/n1740.htm, I call to 
> attention one particular case mentioned there: the case where the 
> second HEBREW LETTER HE of the Tetragrammaton is made very wide and 
> another Holy Name (Adonay, ALEF-DALET-NUN-YOD) is printed in smaller 
> letters inside it.  As mentioned last century, this is even now (well, 
> then) commonly met with, especially in Sephardic prayer books.
>
> I mention it because I've found a bunch of professional Hebrew fonts 
> which have a glyph for this special character.  Take a look at any one 
> of many (but not all) of the offerings of the Samtype Foundry at 
> https://www.myfonts.com/collections/samtype-foundry and you'll see 
> what I mean.  Sometimes it's visible in the sample image, sometimes it 
> isn't even though it's in the font.  They seem to be placing the glyph 
> at codepoint U+FB50, which is ARABIC LETTER ALEF WASLA ISOLATED FORM, 
> probably because it's the next character after the extended Hebrew 
> code-block that ends at U+FB4F HEBREW LIGATURE ALEF LAMED and because, 
> being in an Arabic codeblock, it has RTL directionality (while the PUA 
> I think has LTR directionality, which is most inconvenient.)
>
> So it seems that this really is a thing being used by typefounders 
> even now.  Probably should be encoded, yes?  My rationale from 1998 of 
> encoding the Tetragrammaton as a glyph in itself was apparently not 
> accepted, though after a later paper, 
> https://unicode.org/L2/L2015/15092-hebew-nomina-sacra.pdf and some 
> discussion, the YOD TRIANGLE U+05EF was encoded.  Perhaps this should 
> be too?  I guess as a variant of HE perhaps?  (the name in the 
> subject-header is not meant as a serious proposal for the glyph-name, 
> though this letter is actually serious, despite the date.)
>
> ~mark