Andrew Dunbar wrote:

> I've never been able to find anything to tell me what
> variations of Arabic orthography are legitimate, or if
> you can just include or omit any of the marks, without
> regard to any of the other marks.
>
> Plain text has no vowels, no sukuns, no shaddahs.
> Fully voweled text has vowels, sukuns, and shaddahs.
> But in-between these extremes I'm a bit vague. Are all
> these combinations as acceptable?
>
> 1. vowels but no shaddahs or sukuns.
> 2. shaddahs but no vowels or sukuns.
> 3. shaddahs and sukuns but no vowels.
> 4. vowels with shaddahs or sukuns but not both.
>
> Or maybe there are orthographies which use some of
> these in certain situations only. I know there are in
> Persian.
>
> Hamza on Alef is optional yet common in unvoweled text
> but hamza below alef is much rarer, as are hamza on
> waw and yeh.
>
> The double fatah, dammah, kasrah (nunnation), are very
> rarely seen. Same with alef wasla etc.
>
> Most of my observations are based solely on what I can
> find on the internet so may be due to character set,
> font, input, or display deficiencies.

Sukun is a vowel point, so it wouldn't appear or not if the three vowels
didn't or did. Likewise the tanwin, of course.

Arabic typewriters had shadda.

Hamza is not optional, even the one below initial Alif.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...