From: Antoine LECA (Antoine10646@leca-marti.org)
Date: Fri Nov 08 2002 - 18:29:54 EST
Hi folks,
A problem was signaled in the Microsoft VOLT mailing list (this list
should be dedicated to typographic, but it appears that it deals
more with Indic scripts, because VOLT is the MS tool to use to encode
OpenType informations in a font, which in turn is required to display
Indic scripts on Windows.)
The problem deals with Malayalam half-u. An user signaled as an error
the fact that Uniscribe displays a dotted circle in the middle of a
Malayalam half-u. He wrote
U+0D15 U+0D41 U+0D4D (ka, u, virama)
and Uniscribe displayed (in reformed style) the ku syllable, then a
dotted circle, then a virama sign hanging alone.
Of course, the problem is that Uniscribe expects virama to come only
after consonants, so it displayed it as an error. But I believe the
misunderstood hides a real problem: how can be displayed the half-u.
Hence I am coming here to see what the gurus believe about this.
To help you, I have done some researches. Here is what I have found.
First, the phonetic reality: the root is when a word ends with halanta
(virama); while in other languages, this "kills" the a-sound, in
Malayalam it rather replaces it with the half-u sound, particularly
when the consonant is a conjunct.
This is for example described in the ISO 15919 standard, available
with detailed explanations at Dr Anthony P. Stone site,
<URL:http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stone-catend/trind.htm>
According to Varamozhi (a site well informed about Malayalam),
<URL:http://varamozhi.sourceforge.net/varamozhi-doc/varamozhi-6.html>
when it comes to representation, there exists differing writing
"styles" contemplating this single phonetic reality; in North
Kerala, usage is to write the halanta sign in place, and Done!
Obviously, this is very much in line with the other scripts.
However, in South Kerala, as Mr. Cibu said, usage is to write the
halanta sign as well as to show the matra for the u vowel.
While it is said that this latter usage occurs with the reformed
style, I have seen examples with the traditional style as well
(although this is from a book printed in Madras, so it might be wrong.)
Obviously, the user of Uniscribe intended to display this combination,
which to him is the normal way to display a word, when it ends with
halanta!
Knowing that, we can now notice that Unicode has a note under Malayalam
virama (U+0D4D), saying it is the same as Malayalam half-u. To me, this
means that under Unicode, the half-u is supposed to *not* be specifically
encoded, and only the usage from North Kerala is supposed to be followed.
Other relevant informations: ISCII-91 seems mute about the subject,
and THE CDAC products (like iLeap) seems unable to render the half-u
in Malayalam (until one "cheats" using the INV pseudo-consonant.)
It is too late to discuss the pros and cons of the choice of Unicode,
back in 1992 (probably, they chose to ease as far as possible the
unification of encoding, in order to ease sorting and similar tasks.)
Now, the problem is, if someone wants to specifically encode the
showing of the u matra, in a context (like is Uniscribe) where both
usages from North and South Kerala could be intended, how should it be
done? It seems rather natural to use then the combination
U+0D41 U+0D4D,
following the precedent established in Unicode 3.1 (IIRC) for the modern
Bengali A and E initial vowels (from English borrowed words), which are
written as Bengali A or E, followed by virama then ya (hence a exception
to the rule virama may only follow a consonant.)
Are the gurus here OK with this "solution"?
Can it be "sanctified", for example with the inclusion of the adequate
words in some revision of Unicode?
If this is agreed, when dealing with other aspects than rendering,
people should take in account this, and effectively ignore the U+0D41
when followed by U+0D4D, when the task is about searching, sorting, etc.
While this is a nuisance, it does not appear completely prohibitive to
me. But I admit I have not think a lot about the consequences of
allowing such "presentation encoding."
Regards,
Antoine
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 08 2002 - 19:09:48 EST