From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Fri Sep 02 2005 - 09:40:20 CDT
> From: Christopher Fynn [mailto:cfynn@gmx.net]
> It might be worth looking at a solution to this from the POV of Indic
> scripts in general - as the use of this kind of super and subscribed
> (combining mark) digits is probably not confined to Tamil.
Unless I see attested usage demonstrating otherwise, I assume that
superscript 2, 3, 4 are used in Tamil in particular since it does not
have the complete series of five consonants for each point of
articulation that the other Indic scripts have.
Since Tamil doesn't have consonant clusters, the only issues involved in
using superscript digits is working out what the interaction with matras
is in encoding and rendering. If you were to suggest that Devanagari or
Bengali or Kannada consonants can be modified with superscript digits,
that would raise lots of questions about how it all works. (A sequence <
ka, virama, sup_two, ta > or < ka, virama, ta, sup_two > displays how?)
So, IMO until we are shown what is actually used, we should *not* assume
that this should be generalized across Indic scripts.
> I know that Tibetan has superscribed and subscribed digits which occur
> directly above and below text - and have many examples of these in
both
> old documents and contemporary publications.
Why don't you submit a document showing such samples.
Peter Constable
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