Re: Sanskrit Transliteration Characters

From: Valeriy E. Ushakov (uwe@ptc.spbu.ru)
Date: Tue Feb 20 2001 - 04:40:45 EST


On Tue, Feb 20, 2001 at 00:41:58 -0800, Otto Stolz wrote:

> > Yes, there are CS (classical sanskrit), CSX (CS eXtended) and now CSX+
> > 8-bit character sets for transliteration of Indic languages. CSX+
> > covers all the essential characters needed for ISO 15919, the draft
> > standard for transliteration of Indian languages.
> > http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stone_catend/translit.htm
> > Find attached a mapping file for CSX I wrote to convert a Pali
> > dictionary to Unicode (with perl's Unicode::Map module).
>
> 8-Bit encodings, and font switching, clearly is yesterdays
> technology;

But CSX *is* yesterdays technology. Indologists have been using
CS/CSX for quite some time, way before deployment of Unicode was
practical.

> If it turns out that the required characters are indeed available in
> Unicode, I'd suggest that new texts should exploit this technology,
> particularly if you are planning to publish them via the WWW.

That's why I made and posted CSX mapping. There are a LOT of old
CSX-encoded material. With this mapping I can use existing software
(like the mentioned perl module) to convert it to Unicode and use
emacs to view/edit it.

Dr. Smith wrote CSX+ mapping, but it requires upto 4 Unicode
characters for some of CSX+ characters and I'm not sure any existing
program that use mapping files can handle this map. OTOH, Dr. Smith
wrote a dedicated CSX+ to UTF8 converter (available from his site).
So I don't think it's fair to blame Indologists for shunning Unicode ;-).

SY, Uwe

-- 
uwe@ptc.spbu.ru                         |       Zu Grunde kommen
http://www.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/            |       Ist zu Grunde gehen



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