L2/08-411

South Asia Subcommittee Report

Monday November 3, 2008

E.1.1 Proposal to add three Kaithi punctuation marks (WG2 N3544) [SEI/Anderson, L2/08-370]

Recommendation:

• encode U+110C0 KAITHI DANDA, U+110C1 KAITHI DOUBLE DANDA and U+110BD KAITHI NUMBER SIGN

E.2.1 Malayalam: Comparison of dot-reph proposals [Johny, L2/08-306]

In addition to the alternatives presented in the document, we considered a spacing character that occurs before the consonant, but is rendered as a dot above the consonant, rather than a combining mark occurring after the consonant. It's a variation on D, let’s call it D′.

Ideally, the usual mechanisms, RA Virama {ZWJ/ZWNJ} Cons, would be preferred. However, those mechanisms are already used in legacy documents for the representation of chillus. For that reason, and considering keyboard interactions and collations, D' seems the most promising path.

We recommend to solicit input from the Government of India, and make a resolution at the February 2009 UTC meeting.

E.2.2 Malayalam: Valid combining mark contexts [Johny, L2/08-389]

Recommendation:

• uses of the chandrakalla sign for purposes other than a dead consonant should be clarified by the proposer; it is possible that U+0D4D MALAYALAM SIGN VIRAMA is not the most appropriate character to use in those contexts
• document in the standard that Malayalam base characters, dashes, digits, dotted circle and no-break space are appropriate bases for Malayalam combining characters, and that multiple right-side combining marks can be attached.

E.3.1 Proposal to change some characters for Myanmar Unicode 5.1 [L2/08-408]

The proposal is fundamentally to encode glyph shapes, and reflects a misunderstanding of the Unicode model.

Recommendation:

• give an action item to Eric Muller to respond to that effect to the author

Recommendation: