Re: Devanagari [was Re: Any web-published rebuttals to

From: Sandeep Sibal (sibal@att.com)
Date: Fri Jan 10 1997 - 02:30:44 EST


Geoff Back <GEOFF@AUTOCUE.MHS.CompuServe.COM> wrote:
>
> Yes, coding DEVANAGARI with Unicode is tricky. Yes, it's just as bad with
> ISCII. However, try coding a keyboard input driver for GIST (the standard

Geoff,

I dont have the docs on GIST's glyph set, but I doubt it exceeds 200.
I can think of a few ways of mapping these glyphs onto a regular
keyboard using modifiers. I havent written keyboard drivers -
and I suppose the degree of difficulty depends on the
functionality of the underlying OS/platform...

Ligatures in Devanagri, unlike the "if" type ligatures In English
are not really stylistic options. There are rules that govern them.
In some cases a ligature MUST be used, in others it depends on the
language that is being scripted. To leave the ligature to the domain
of a font designer is I believe incorrect. If Unicode does not specify
these ligatures, it is like leaving a part of a script unspecified.
Anyway, I dont want to belabor the point.

Cheers,
Sandeep.



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