--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Dunbar <hippietrail@...> wrote:

> --- Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:
> > At 20:26 -0400 2004-08-01, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > I am not sure the Hebrew points count as "letters",
> > though -- in which case it may not be appropriate
> > to say that the Hebrew script is used as an
> > alphabet when pointed.
>
> Then we need a solid definition of what a letter is.
> And to preempt we will also need solid definitions of
> what a diacritic is.

That's not going to be easy. How do you handle the German umlaut
symbol, which can manifest itself as a following 'e'? And what
about abbreviations such as LATIN LETTER B WITH STROKE for 'ber' (as
in Northumbland with barred 'b' for Northumberland) or p with a
stroke through the descender to indicate 'par' or 'per', as in 'pt'
(with barred 'p') for 'part' or 'ex pte' (barred p) for 'ex parte'
that used to be used in England a few hundred years ago.

Actually, don't we have a definition of a diacritic? Isn't it a
Unicode combining character? We might have to make it circular to
cope with Thai - one that would normally be a Unicode combining
character.

Richard.