From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Sun Apr 03 2005 - 17:04:01 CST
At 15:35 -0700 2005-04-03, John Hudson wrote:
>Michael Everson wrote:
>
>>Certainly. By encoding these as unique letter consonants we ensure
>>that vowel matras will follow them, and we avoid any confusion
>>caused by the application of an additional character. That is, BBA
>>+ U = BBU, which is simple, whereas if it were BA + IMP + U = BBU,
>>there would be the possibility of incorrectly writing BA + U + IMP.
>>That is "less simple" than just encoding four letters. Plus the
>>mark interacts with the base consonant; cf Latin barred t, d, l,
>>etc. So this proposal is analogous to existing practice in the
>>Standard.
>
>
>>Implosive consonants are rare, for one. IPA gives symbols for five
>>of them, four of which are used in Sindhi (BBA 0253, DDDA 0257, GGA
>>0260, JJA 0284). The one which isn't is the voiced uvular implosive
>>(029B). Devanagari doesn't have a symbol for the voiced uvular stop
>>(0262) either.
>>
>>The IPA Handbook gives Mam (a Mayan language) as using the voiced
>>uvular implosive.
>
>
>Thanks for the response, Michael. I'm not convinced of a *need* for
>processing simplicity given the example in the first paragraph
>above: ensuring correct character ordering is something that one has
>to do for Devanagari anyway.
There is no cause for us to add to its complexity. In any case not
only could BA + IMP + U or BA + U + IMP occur and cause confusion,
but IMP could be confused with ANUDATTA, and there's no reason to
permit that.
>However, your other points are reasonable and, with this additional
>information, I'm happy to support the four characters as proposed.
Thank you. As usual, I just see a cumulation of reasons all leading
to the same point; I don't weight the arguments against each other. I
see no argument *for* encoding a combining implosive mark.
-- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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