Myanmar script, Pali language and other unencoded conjuncts or punctuations

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Dec 30 2004 - 17:52:56 CST

  • Next message: Christopher Fynn: "Re: Myanmar script, Pali language and other unencoded conjuncts or punctuations"

    There are many references that speak about the usage of the Myanmar script
    to write the Pali language, as well as the Mon, Shan and Khamti languages
    (in addition to Burmese for which apparently the current "support" in
    Unicode has been defined).

    But I don't find the Pali language listed on:
    http://www.unicode.org/onlinedat/languages-scripts.html

    There are very few references in fact for the Myanmar script, beside the
    very summary description in the Unicode standard, and even the various font
    editing tools (and as well Windows, which still does not handle in Uniscribe
    the Myanmar features enabled normally enabled in OpenType by the script bit
    #74) lack support for this script.

    Are there sources available for an exhaustive list of contextual forms and
    conjuncts used in the Myanmar script?

    I can easily find fonts for the Myanmar/Pali script, (none of them mapped to
    Unicode), and most of them contain symbols and conjuncts that appear nowhere
    in the Unicode standard. My interpretation of these symbols is that most of
    them could be used to write Pali and Mon languages, but they are not used
    directly to write Burmese.

    Also, there are many special conjunct ligatures, or even isolated glyph
    components that are used separately of the existing ligatures currently
    encoded in Unicode (as special symbols for the modern script): are these
    isolated forms used as historic letters?

    But there are also additional diacritics, and special forms for common
    punctuations (notably outlined forms for single and double 9-shaped
    quotation marks, and I wonder if they should be unified with the existing
    plain forms of the generic comma-shaped quotes).

    Given that the Myanmar script is used not only in Myanmar (from which it's
    nearly impossible to find accessible resources), but also in India, Thailand
    and China, why aren't there such resources more easily accessible? Are there
    works on this script (I can't find any info about Myanmar in Microsoft
    Typography and Adobe web sites...)?



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