From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Fri Apr 01 2005 - 23:59:11 CST
Michael Everson wrote:
> N2934: Proposal to add four characters for Sindhi to the BMP of the UCS
> http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2934.pdf
I'm glad to see the Sindhi implosives being proposed. Thanks, Michael.
In the proposal, you write 'No “combining implosive” diacritic is proposed here for the
four Sindhi letters, for simplicity in encoding.' It seems to me that simplicity here must
be reckoned in terms of the overall complexity of Devanagari: since any system for
rendering Unicode Devanagari text needs to be able to handle all of the layout
complexities that would be required to handle a Sindhi Implosive Mark (including
mark-to-base ligation for designs in which the bar joins to the vertical stem), I wonder
whether there is any net benefit to the 'simplicity' of encoding four letters instead of
one mark?
Also, how certain are we -- or can we be -- that there may not be other potential
implosive letters, e.g. for dialects, that would need to be separately encoded in future
if we follow the path of encoding these four letters instead of a combining mark? The
combining mark approach has the advantage of being an open-ended solution, even if it does
require additional complexity in terms of normalisation, sorting and layout.
I'm interested to know what your thinking is, Michael.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com Currently reading: A century of philosophy, by Hans Georg Gadamer David Jones: artist and poet, ed. Paul Hills
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