From: Robert (bob4you27@excite.com)
Date: Fri Oct 25 2002 - 00:30:31 EDT
--- On Sun 10/13, Tom Gewecke wrote:
From: Tom Gewecke [mailto: tom@bluesky.org]
To: unicode@unicode.org
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 11:26:04 -0700
Subject: Manchu/Mongolian in Unicode
> The latest Mac OS X upgrade has fonts that include the classic
> Mongolian/Manchu range, 1800-18AF.
>
> Displaying these scripts correctly seems to be loaded with problems:
> They
> should run top-to-bottom and left-to-right, with ligatures and positional
> variants similar to Arabic.
>
> I assume that ligatures and positional variants would be handled by font
> tables and rendering software operating on text encoded with the basic
> codepoints. I'm wondering, however, how the directional questions of
> display would be dealt with.
>
> I gather that vertical display is for markup and not part of Unicode.
> I've
> found what appears to be the appropriate stuff in the
> "writing-mode"
> property of XSL and CSS3. Does anyone know of any browsers, Mac or
> Windows,
> that support this?
>
> I've also seen examples of the scripts written horizontally, both
> left-to-right and right-to-left. Since the standard font glyphs have a
> vertical orientation, they must be individually rotated minus or plus 90
> degrees for displaying horizontally. Is this also purely a markup issue,
> and are there any browsers that support it?
>
> Thanks for the help! Any pointers to online or other information on this
> topic would be appreciated.
>
>
--Reply--
Another language alphabetic script that reads left-to-right vertically from top-to-bottom is Sarati, another of the fantasy scripts from the late J. R. R. Tolkien's *Lord Of The Rings* book series. Featured in Sarati are the consonant symbols (sarat) that form the backbone of the vertical reading line; the vowels are small marks that go on either side (left for before, right for after) of the involved consonant—the name *Illuvatar* (for example) would be written thus in Sarati:
the holding the initial mark to its left. Carriers long and short are used to hold vowel signs that form syllables by themselves (like the initial in *Illuvatar*, above).
There's even a sarat for the blend , to boot! Vowel marks include those for lengthened doubles and (the 2nd being a double shəwa).
Thank You!
Robert Lloyd Wheelock
Augusta, ME USA
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