L2/09-203 Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 15:18:22 -0500 Subject: Deprecated Telugu and Malayalam reph sequences From: "N. Ganesan" ------------------------- On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Nagarjuna Venna wrote: > > My understanding is that proposal 2 is accepted and Eric has the action. > > Nagarjuna > > The deprecated reph in Telugu uses a ZWJ: . Like Tamil OM sign due for release in Windows 7.0. http://nganesan.blogspot.com/2009/05/tamil-om-windows7.html we can ask Microsoft people (Ali, ...) to see if Telugu Reph will work in Windows 7.0. In the Next Week's UTC meeting, the deprecated Malayalam reph encoding is up for discussion. Like reph sequences of South Asian scripts such as Telugu, Gurmukhi. Grantha, Sinhala, (eyelash) reph in Devanagari, I've proposed reph sequence (may be using ZWJ) instead of atomic code point. ------- One sequence among the following should take care of the very rare dot-reph sequence in Malayalam without introducing a new code point for Reph in Malayalam. It is very common to make use of ZWJ in sequence to produce a Reph in South Asian scripts. For example, Sinhala script also uses a ZWJ for Reph (called Repaya in Sri Lanka). Reph in Malayalam, called dot-reph in some proposals at Unicode site, is now deprecated and the archaic letter, dot-reph's usage is very rare and used once in a few years by some. Normally Chillu RR is employed to replace dot-reph. For some reason, if Unicode Standard has to define a new dot-reph sequence, there are other choices to avoid a new combining sign for dot-reph in Malayalam Unicode. Option (A): Deprecated Dot-Reph of Malayalam script: {REPH_OVER C2} = In Malayalam Unicode 5.0 or earlier, = Chillu RR code point in Unicode 5.1. Note the change from RA to RRA. In reph representation (e.g., 'eyelash' reph in Devanagari script used in Marathi and Nepali scripts) of Unicode, we make use of the consonant RRA instead of RA. In Telugu, the deprecated reph sequence: chosen from http://www.mit.edu/~nagarjun/Unicode/reph.pdf Following Telugu deprecated reph sequence, and using RRA as in eyelash reph in Devanagari, the deprecated dot-reph in Malayalam = . For a parallel situation with ZWJ, look at the Bengali script where <09B0, ZWJ (200D), VIRAMA (09CD), 09AF> sequence is used to resolve the ambiguity (TUS 5.0, Ch. 9, Pg. 316). Gurmukhi script uses joiners (ZWJ and ZWNJ) in these archaic repha sequences as well. See the Table in Gurmukhi section in Ch. 9, TUS. Sinhala script uses ZWJ joiner its reph (=repaya). So, the Option (A) for the rare archaic dot-reph of Malayalam will be in line with the representations of South Asian scripts' reph sequences. Option (B) Government of India Recommendation, L2/09-072 GOI inputs on Representation of Malayalam Dot Reph (Manoj Jain). The Govt. of India recommends the sequence, per L2/09-072: {REPH_OVER C2} = Note that sequence of the Govt. of India recommendation is used already in Unicode 5.1, Table 3: http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/ Better than using Virama after Chillu RR in Malayalam dot-reph sequence will be to use ZWJ instead as is done in Telugu, Gurmukhi, Sinhala, .... reph sequences: {REPH_OVER C2} = Option (A) or (B) will provide the dot-reph sequence without the need for Reph code point in Malayalam. This will be in line with reph sequences for scripts of India or Sri Lanka where there is no separate reph code point. This is available at http://nganesan.blogspot.com/2009/05/malayalam-dot-reph.html Thanks, Naga Ganesan