RE: Tamil glyphs

From: Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com
Date: Thu Sep 07 2000 - 06:17:43 EDT


Antoine Leca wrote:
> Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote:
> [...]
> > The Monotype font and Latha in Windows 2000 are the way
> that my client got
> > both display types.
>
> I believe this is a rather special need that your client
> have: as I understand,
> he wants, at the same time, some rendering forms from MS
> Latha (usually, these
> are the modern forms), and some others forms from Monotype
> Tamil. Usually,
> these needs are in books that explain the script...

This is my assumption as well. But I am wondering whether this is correct.

I am gradually developing the impression that the spelling of modern Indic
languages occasionally needs old graphies (ligatures, etc.) in quotations
from "classical" sources.

This does not parallel with the Western usage of "classical" quotations:
when we occasionally use Latin expressions in modern language, we write them
in a modernized spelling. E.g., we normally write "vice versa", "jus primae
noctis", etc., using "v", "j", "ae" in place of "u", "i", "æ"; and we
certainly don't try and revive the hundreds ligatures of old Latin
manuscripts and incunabula.

But is this true also with, e.g., a Sanskrit quotation in modern Hindi text?
My impression is, on the contrary, that in decent typography such a
quotation may require special Sanskrit glyphs that are not seen in normal
Hindi text.

The same impression I had for Malayalam: unless my correspondents
exaggerated the typographical complexity (or I completely misunderstood
them, which is likely), modern Malayalam needs a mixture of "reformed" and
"traditional" rendering, according to the "stylistic register" of the piece
of text being rendered.

But, as usual, I am just speculating over the fragmentary information I
have. It would be nice subscribers fluent in Indian languages could explain
better how it really works.

_ Marco



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:13 EDT