L2/09-196

Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 20:39:13 -0500
Subject: Comment on L2/09-178: Malayalam Dot-Reph
From: "N. Ganesan" <naa.ganesan@gmail.com>

Cibu Johny, author of L2/09-178, says that there is no
representation for Malayalam dot-reph in Unicode.
L2/09-178, Section A Introduction: "There is no representation for Dot-Reph."

This claim is not correct. See Unicode 5.0 where the dot-reph is
clearly defined.
Page 336 (pg. 43 of 44 in pdf), Table 9-23, Malayalam Conjuncts:
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.0.0/ch09.pdf
the Malayalam dot-reph is given for example the cluster, "rpa"
as <RA, VIRAMA, PA>. Malayalam is treated as a script
with reph representation in Unicode.

All the occurrences of Malayalam dot-reph are easily representable
as done in neighboring scripts such as in Kannada Unicode also.
For detailed examples, please see my document L2/08-195.

(1) The dot-reph is not in current use in Malayalam printed books.
A Government of Kerala Order declares that dot-reph be replaced
with Chillu r/rr (= U+0D7C code point).

[dot-reph, C2] > [chillu r/rr, C2]
[dot-reph, C2, virama, C2] > [chillu r/rr, C2, virama, C2]

(2) All the possible combinations of archaic dot-reph in Malayalam
printed books are listed in Tables 1, 2 and 3 in L2/08-195.

In Row 2, Tables 1 and 2, <ra, zwj, virama, ya/va> is used for
{RA_SUBSCRIPT_YA/VA} sequence. The use of ZWJ for in Malayalam
is parallel with Kannada Unicode in a similar situation. Ref.: Page
334, TUS 5.0.

In traditional style fonts (= archaic Malayalam style),
{REPH_OVER_YA} = <RA, VIRAMA, YA>
{RA_SUBSCRIPT_YA_SIGN} = <RA, ZWJ, VIRAMA, YA>.

In sum, these sequences will easily and adequately represent
all the dot-reph cases, and can be documented in
TUS 6.0 printed book. There is no need to encode a
new combining reph sign as, like in Kannada, we can currently
represent all the dot-reph Malayalam words quite well.

Naga Ganesan