Re: Unicode and Bengali

From: James E. Agenbroad (jage@loc.gov)
Date: Tue Mar 05 2002 - 13:22:25 EST


On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Doug Ewell wrote:

> Dhrubajyoti Banerjee <dhrub@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> [quoting Akshor]
> > I thing we need not be restrained by these so-called 'standards'.
> Because,
> > they can't and will not serve our need (Bengali) in my humble view.
> Thats
> > why we toke this project at our hand and working to impliment a
> universal
> > input method.."
>
> They can implement any input method they like. Having discrete keys for
> consonants and half-forms does not mean those forms have to be encoded
> separately.
>
> > In fact they have put a huge number of "conjunct characters" in the
> Private
> > Use Area. Its a pity because it means that so many people still do not
> even
> > understand the difference between characters and glyphs.
> >
> > I hope Unicode proliferates fast in these areas so people can
> understand it
> > and use it without wasting time in such activities as reinventing the
> wheel.
>
> What a relief to hear someone within the Indic community who actually
> understands the character-glyph model. You probably know that many,
> many users of Indic scripts believe Unicode is "incomplete" or
> "inadequate" without separately encoded conjuncts and glyph variants.
> Please do your best to share your knowledge!
>
> BTW, your post was anything but "offtopic."
>
> -Doug Ewell
> Fullerton, California
>
                                                  Tuesday, March 5, 2002
It may not be obvious to all so I'll say it: Unicode is as complete and
adequate as ISCII because they both use the phonetic approach to encoding
Indic scripts, as distinguished from the graphic approach. Though I
attended one meeting of its authors in 1982, ISCII is a purely Indian
standard (IS 13194: 1991) which also lacks separately encoded conjuncts
and glyph variants.
        
     Regards,
          Jim Agenbroad ( jage@LOC.gov )
     "It is not true that people stop pursuing their dreams because they
grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing their dreams." Adapted
from a letter by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
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