[Fwd]: [indic] pD7A..pD7E Malayalam chillu

Comments welcome.

----- Forwarded message from Eric Muller <emuller-dv/[email protected]> -----

 > Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:48:05 -0700
 > From: Eric Muller <emuller-dv/[email protected]>
 > Subject: [indic] pD7A..pD7E Malayalam chillu
 > To: indic <[email protected]>
 > User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7)
 >  Gecko/20040616
 > Message-id: <412E2255.3020601-dv/[email protected]>
 > Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
 > 
 > pD7A MALAYALAM LETTER NN
 > pD7B MALAYALAM LETTER N
 > pD7C MALAYALAM LETTER RR
 > pD7D MALAYALAM LETTER L
 > pD7E MALAYALAM LETTER LL
 > 
 > From previous discussions on this list, I am almost convinced that 
 > those need to be encoded as characters (and there is even one more, not 
 > in modern used, based on KA). What is needed is a proposal that gives 
 > evidence of the constrast between, e.g., NA + visible virama and chillu N.
 > 
 > There is no question that only one of the two renderings is acceptable 
 > in any given circumstance, and that the proper rendering cannot be 
 > determined from the context; in other words, that there must be some 
 > difference in the representation of text. What is less clear is whether 
 > that difference of representation should be achieved by encoding new 
 > characters, or by using the current mechanism of following the virama by 
 > ZWJ (to get the chillu) or ZWNJ (to get the visible virama). [To be 
 > sure, the joiner mechanism is currently underspecified, since the 
 > rendering of a sequence that does not include a joiner is not defined; 
 > but let's set that aside for now.]
 > 
 > My understanding is that there are pairs of words, which differ only in 
 > having, e.g., a NA + virama or a chillu N. To take an example from 
 > English "last" and "lost" differ in using "a" or "o", and even if "o" 
 > was used only in this word, this would be a good enough reason to 
 > encoded an "o". What we need are actual examples of this situation, 
 > preferably a couple of examples for each of the six characters. I'll be 
 > happy to turn those examples into a proposal in the form preferred by 
 > the UTC and ISO (to be reviewed here, of course).
 > 
 > 
 > Eric.
 > 
 > 

----- End forwarded message -----

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         Mahesh T. Pai    <<>>   http://paivakil.port5.com