Michael Everson wrote:

> > > Sorry, Peter, that's a dodge. Just because they are obligatory
> >> doesn't mean they aren't the points QAMATS and PATAH.
> >
> >They were, historically. In Yiddish, they aren't.
>
> Of course they are. We shall agree to disagree.

IMHO, there is no need of disagreeing here: both analyses are correct, in
their own domain.

Peter's statement is correct by the linguistic/grammatological point of
view: in the spelling of the Yiddish *language*, Qamats Alef and Patah Alef
are two separate *letters* and should be regarded ad indivisible units.
This parallels with Spanish "ch", which is considered as a single letter.

Michael's statement is correct by the typographical/encoding point of view:
in the Hebrew *script* Alef, Qamats and Patah are separate *character*. This
analysis correctly disregards the orthography of any particular language, as
when one design a Hebrew fonts she should't assume whether it will be used
to typeset Hebrew, Yiddish, Judezmo or what not.
This parallels with the two characters in string "ch", which are typed or
written as separate letters regardless how they are considered in the
spelling of any single language.

This argument is quite of a déja vu on this mailing list... Aren't there any
proper terms available to refer two the two kinds of analysis above? E.g.
something like "functional analysis" vs. "surface analysis"?

_ Marco