Re: Pali Texts [was: New contribution]

From: C J Fynn (cfynn@gmx.net)
Date: Wed May 05 2004 - 05:01:34 CDT


"Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com> wrote:

> >>At 10:34 -0700 2004-04-29, Peter Kirk wrote:

> >But do scholars and the Pali Text Society encode the texts in Latin
> >and then use masquerading fonts or whatever to render the texts in
> >whichever script they prefer to?
>
> Certainly not.
>
> >Very likely they do at the moment.
>
> Yet another unsubstantiated supposition on your part.

Most of the Pāli Text Society's own publications date back more than fifty
years,
were primarily designed for use by western scholars and use Roman
transliteration.

According to information received from Dhammanando Bhikkhu, texts of the Pāli
Canon are available in Sinhalese, Burmese, Laotian, Khmer, Thai, Khom, Tai
Khun, Tai Lue, Lanna, Mon, Shan, Devanagari, Bangla and Roman scripts.

he adds:

" I don't know how much has been published in Bangla script. The available
Tai Khun and Tai Lue texts are mostly kammavaacaa or parts of
kammavaacaa (i.e. portions of the Vinaya to be recited during
ordinations, ka.thina, and other sanghakamma). The rest are complete
Tipitakas."

I've been asked by several people about the feasibility of producing a system
which can store Pāli text in the characters for one script and display it in
the other scripts - dependant on the script the user is most familiar with.
Given the range of scripts concerned this doesn't look easy.

At present there is no system (or "masquerading fonts") to accomplish this,
even for a subset of the scripts concerned.

- Chris



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