Re: Indic diacritics (ISO 15919) in Mac OS

From: N. Ganesan (naa.ganesan@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 28 2010 - 12:01:45 CST

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    On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Lee Collins <lcollins@apple.com> wrote:
    >
    > On Mar 28, 2010, at 9:03 AM, N. Ganesan wrote:
    >
    >> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Lee Collins <lcollins@apple.com> wrote:
    >>>
    >>>> I have a Mac question.
    >>>> Recent Microsoft s/w  in Vista, Windows 7
    >>>> natively support ISO 15919 diacritics.
    >>>> Is it the case with Apple Mac OS most recent
    >>>> versions?
    >>>
    >>> Yes. They have been supported on Mac OS for several versions now and are also supported on the currently shipping iPhone OS.
    >>>
    >>> Lee
    >>>
    >>
    >> Thanks, Lee. That's great!
    >>
    >> Can Apple iPhone and iPad tablet, until the time it starts showing
    >> the Indic scripts, use ISO 15919 diacritics to show
    >> the web pages browsed and for emails in them?
    >> i.e., as a fall-back option in mobiles when Tamil fonts
    >> are not present.
    >
    >> Also, even when all Indic fonts show up in iPhone, iPad,
    >> there will be a sizable section in neighboring states,
    >> or those who do not read Indic scripts in schools.
    >> And adding an *option* in Mobiles to choose ISO15919
    >> Latin diacritics for Indic text display will help them a lot.
    >
    >>
    >> There is a good percentage of Indian school children
    >> who are in English medium schools, and do not
    >> use Indic, and they are comfortable with English script.
    >> Besides, the mobile technology in every one's hand
    >> puts digraphia for India, just as Chinese and Japanese
    >> use digraphia - use pinyin-like roman script inputting
    >> to show Chinese picture-letters in texting.
    >> Same thing in India - most people use
    >> Roman inputting to generate Indic script display.
    >>
    >> So, having a ISO 15919 Latin display for
    >> Indic texts in moblies will be a boon
    >> (a) as a fall-back option when Indic text
    >> fonts is not possible commercially
    >> in some locales and (b) for those who
    >> want to read Indic text in Latin script.
    >
    > We already support transliteration between Indic scripts and Latin at the OS level through API in Core Foundation. Making this functionality available at the UI level might be a useful feature. It's something we can consider, though I can't commit to it at this point.
    >
    > Regards,
    >
    > Lee
    >

    (a) Linguists classify the languages, Hindi and Urdu as being very close,
    it is mainly the script difference that makes communication between
    communities difficult. While cinema films made in Bombay, India
    are immensely popular in Pakistan, Afghanistan etc.,
    (b) Take the case of Tamil and Sinhala in Sri Lanka.
    A section of the peoples of these two communities
    knows the other language, but they are not familiar
    with a particular script.

    Given these script communication problems,
    it will be great if Apple can provide ISO 15919
    romanisation in her mobile products as an option
    to browse the web and for emails.
    Hope this can easily be implemented even before
    the market develops for Indic scripts in iPad, iPhones, ....

    Same thing for Blackberrys or Nokias,
    in places where providing Indic fonts and
    rendering engines in mobiles does not make
    any commercial sense, please provide
    Indic texts in ISO 15919 roman diacritics working.
    That should be easy to do, and does not take
    the valuable space in mobile OS.

    N. Ganesan



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