Dagger Alif

[OmarKN]

Hi & good day,

Does Mellel allow for the Dagger Alif in Arabic?
can't find it.

with best regards,
Omar KN

[jannuss]

Hi & good day,

Does Mellel allow for the Dagger Alif in Arabic?
can't find it.

with best regards,
Omar KN

Hi Omar, here's what Wikipedia says:

The superscript (or dagger) ʾalif ⟨أَلِف خَنْجَرِيَّة⟩ (ʾalif ḫanǧariyyah), is written as short vertical stroke on top of a consonant. It indicates a long /aː/ sound where ʾalif is normally not written, e.g. ⟨هٰذَا⟩ (hāḏā) or ⟨رَحْمٰن⟩ (raḥmān).
The dagger ʾalif occurs in only a few words, but these include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts. Most keyboards do not have dagger ʾalif. The word Allah ⟨الله⟩ (Allāh) is usually produced automatically by entering ʾalif lām lām hāʾ. The word consists of ʾalif + ligature of doubled lām with a šaddah and a dagger ʾalif above ʾlām.

If I understand correctly, that means that there is no separate symbol for dagger alit. You have to construct it yourself by inputting alit plus the ligature.

Does this help?

Janet

[OmarKN]

>You have to construct it yourself by inputting alit plus the ligature.

Could you point towards an explanation how to do this please?

Would be great!

with best regards,
Omar KN
(Stockholm, Sweden)

[jannuss]

>You have to construct it yourself by inputting alit plus the ligature.

Could you point towards an explanation how to do this please?

Would be great!

with best regards,
Omar KN
(Stockholm, Sweden)

OK, Omar, I have no experience using the Arabic keyboard.
Here are two ideas for finding the solution.

1. Set you computer to work in Arabic and turn on the Keyboard viewer [in the flag menu]

2. Input the alif [shift-D correct?]

3. now we need to add the dagger. we should find it on the Keyboard Viewer by pressing alt or shift-alt.
I don't see it. Do you?

The second way to add ligatures is using the Character Viewer (also in the flag menu)

1. open the Character Viewer and move the table down to Arabic, unicode 0600

2. alif is in position 0649

3. but, again, I'm having trouble finding the dagger.
-- 0670 looks close

I was very surprised not to find a special alif dragger character in the unicode table.

Do you know if it has a unicode number?

Janet

[OmarKN]

This board UI kicks me out of my inlogg, so I have to write the thing again!!!
=================================================================
I found 0670 then Font Variation, this could be the short Alif.

But how to implement it from here to be able to type it?

Also in my Character Viewer I don't see any Arabic, only "Arrows... down to Latin.

So far so good.


with best regards,
Omar KN
(Stockholm, Sweden)

[jannuss]

This board UI kicks me out of my inlogg, so I have to write the thing again!!!
=================================================================
I found 0670 then Font Variation, this could be the short Alif.

But how to implement it from here to be able to type it?

Also in my Character Viewer I don't see any Arabic, only "Arrows... down to Latin.

So far so good.


with best regards,
Omar KN
(Stockholm, Sweden)

First, how to use the Character Viewer -- the new implementation with Mountain Lion is very awkward. Many people have complained about it -- it took me a long like to figure it out

1. open Character Viewer
2. on the upper left, over "Recently used" is a sun symbol, click on the arrow to it's right
3. now, select customize list
4. you will probably want to select Arabic (under Middle Eastern scripts) and unicode (under code tables) and probably some others
5. Now your selections have been added to the lis under "Recently Used"
6. Double Click Arabic and you will see all the Arabic symbols, or
You can double click Unicode and scroll down to 0600. Now you see all the Arabic symbols with their unicode numbers

AND I FOUND IT!!
I just walked through all the steps above to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I double clicked on Arabic and slowly scrolled down through the long set of symbols.
Surprise -- there is a versions of Alif Dagger available in the Arabic Presentations forms list:
-- unicode number FC5D "ARABIC LIGATURE ALEF MAKSURA WITH SUPERSCRIPT ALEF ISOLATED FORM"

Yeh!

To enter the symbol in your text simply double click on it.
You can also add it to the "favorites" list so you will be able to get at it quickly next time you open the Character Viewer.

Of course, not all font contain all symbols. I don't have any special Arabic fonts installed. My copy of Character Viewer showed variations of Alif Dagger with only five of my fonts.

Wow.
That was an adventure.

Hope it solves your problem.

Janet

[vinesy]

Janet found the dagger alif with alef maksoura, but it is also there for a few other characters too: ﱛﱜﱝﲐﳙۈﯴ and there is a superscript alef ٰ .

Also re:

Also in my Character Viewer I don't see any Arabic, only "Arrows... down to Latin.

I think you need to tell Character Viewer to show Arabic in your list by clicking on the gear icon and "customize" see screenshot (OSX 10.:



**Edit: if screenshot isn't showing, here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dt4tdq9y3v7t0 ... 6%20AM.png