At 06:38 -0500 1997-01-17, Maurice J Bauhahn wrote:
>I was surprized to see in undeletable (!!) Unicode 2.0 0E70,
>0E71, 0E72, 0E73, and 0E74 of the Unicode 1.0 Thai encoding were eliminated
>(These were called Phonetic order clones of left side vowel signs).
They were deleted between 1.0 and 1.1, which was the merger of Unicode and
ISO 10646.
>If Khmer was substituted on to an ISCII encoding, several consonants would
>need to be added out of alphabetic order and some vowels added. For speed
>of sorting that would be disadvantageous...but if economic considerations
>made it necessary, Cambodians would have to put up with the
>inconvenience.
I can't imagine that it would be *that* expensive in terms of speed.
Certainly the closer a script is to a Brahmic encoding, the cheaper it is
to adapt from software built for an existing Brahmic encoding.
(I prefer to call the ISCII/Unicode/10646 "family of encoding-principles"
Brahmic encoding generically. Tibetan would not have a Brahmic encoding,
though historically it is a Brahmic script.)
>One _can_ put proper weight to subscripts in this way...however at
>additional time cost. I envision helping Cambodians to sort
>millions of strings on their computers, and am fearful of the
>implications of numerous compromises that reduce the efficiency of
>sorting. Sorting in Khmer is similarly dependent on the root of the
>syllable (thank you, Michael, for putting it that way...it makes it more
>understandable to the uninitiated).
Maurice, will you please write a paper with examples and submit it to WG2
and to the UTC for scrutiny? A paper in HTML format would be nice.
>In Khmer there are five different
>weightings within a syllable: base consonant (or implied glottal stop
>consonant), first subscript consonant, second subscript consonant, vowel,
>and sign. It will be nice with Unicode to combine all the vowel glyphs
>combinations into one character!
None of this sounds like "root" in the sense in which Tibetan uses the term.
-- Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta 15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire (Ireland) Gutháin: +353 1 478-2597, +353 1 283-9396 http://www.indigo.ie/egt 27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Co. Átha Cliath; Éire
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