From: Marco Cimarosti (marco.cimarosti@essetre.it)
Date: Tue Dec 17 2002 - 13:32:44 EST
Jungshik Shin wrote:
> [...]
> > http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/WG2/docs/n2558.pdf
> [...]
>
> Is there any opentype/AAT font for Tibetan? Do Uniscribe, Pango,
> ATSUI, and Graphite support them if there are opentype Tibetan fonts?
> In addition to the principle of character encoding, the best practical
> counterargument would come from a demonstration that Unicode encoding
> model for Tibetan script does work in practice.
Another key point, IMHO, is verifying the following claim contained in the
proposal document:
"Tibetan BrdaRten characters are structure-stable characters widely
used in education, publication, classics documentation including Tibetan
medicine. The electronic data containing BrdaRten characters are
estimated beyond billions. Once the Tibetan BrdaRten characters are encoded
in BMP, many current systems supporting ISO/IEC10646 will enable Tibetan
processing without major modification. Therefore, the international standard
Tibetan BrdaRten characters will speed up the standardization and
digitalization of Tibetan information, keep the consistency of
implementation level of Tibetan and other scripts, develop the Tibetan
culture and make the Tibetan culture resources shared by the world." [BTW,
billions of what!?]
If the claim proves to be false, well... But if it is true (or even if it is
not but someone insists it is), I think that it is necessary to
*demonstrate* the possibility and convenience of alternative solutions.
I'd propose the following:
1. Find all the available technical details about this BrdaRten
encoding.
2. Come up with a precise machine-readable mapping file between
BrdaRten encoding to *decomposed* Unicode Tibetan, possibly accompanied by a
sample conversion application.
Reasons: (a) to make it easy to migrate BrdaRten legacy data to
Unicode; (b) to easily update existing BrdaRten applications to export
Unicode text; (c) to easily retrofit new Unicode applications to import
BrdaRten text.
3. (The opposite of point 2) come up with a precise machine-readable
mapping file between *decomposed* Unicode Tibetan and BrdaRten encoding,
possibly accompanied by a sample conversion application.
Reasons: (a) to make it easy to recycle precomposed glyphs from
existing BrdaRten fonts into modern "smart fonts"; (b) to easily update
existing BrdaRten applications to import Unicode text; (c) to easily
retrofit new Unicode applications to export BrdaRten text.
_ Marco
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