Gaps in Brahmic Allocations (was: Tamil Collation vs Transliteration/Transcription Enc)

From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sat Jun 25 2005 - 14:42:45 CDT

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    Michael Everson wrote:

    > It is the case that the Indic blocks (for the major scripts) have
    > one-to-one positional equivalences. This was unnecessary, and wasteful of
    > space -- but it was inherited from ISCII, so you can go and blame them if
    > you don't like it. Having said that, even though it was unnecessary and
    > wasteful of space, it was in no way harmful to any of the Indic scripts.

    I had always seen the gaps as forward planning, either for future parallel
    developments, or for archaic letters as the use of the script was found to
    encompass older practices. However, the resuscitation or recognition of
    normatively discarded letters may be seen as harmful - we're seeing a Tamil
    view, and there may be a similar Lao view.

    I can't help wondering if some of the spelling reforms (Lao, Tai Lue) have
    had a hidden agenda of breaking links to a Pali heritage.

    Richard.

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