From: Eric Muller (emuller@adobe.com)
Date: Sun Sep 04 2005 - 12:30:43 CDT
Peter Constable wrote:
>>(1) With the Mangal font, TTA + VIRAMA + TTHA + I should be two
>>orthographic
>>syllables because of the font's conjunct repertoire, i.e. as the
>>
>>
>virama
>
>
>>must
>>be visible, the vowel should attach to the TTHA. This special case
>>(obvious
>>to a human)
>>
>>
>
>Is *not* so obvious to a human. In fact, there are two writing
>conventions that you will find in use in the event of a consonant
>cluster where C1 has no half form and a conjunct ligature is not used.
>One is to place I before the killed consonant, the other placing the I
>after the killed consonant / before the live consonant.
>
>
Indeed. See Rupert Snell, "Beginner's Hindi Script", p 82, in particular:
The standardizing authorities have also condemned such clear and
elegant conjunct format as <dya> for dya (preferring <da virama ya>)
and <ddha> (preferring <da virama dha>); and they even recommended
that an i-sign in a syllable such as ddhi should fall _between_ the
two components of the conjunct, giving <da virama i ddha> instead of
the well-established <i ddha>! The resulting <...da virama i
ddha...> buddhimani ("wisdom") is a strange and inelegant form of
<...i ddha ...>; but fortunately, Hindi's wiser public ignores such
official recommendations and sticks to the old forms that have
served so well for centuries.
(<xx> is my transcription of a sequence of Devanagari glyphs) Also, in
the bibliography:
Kendriya Hindi Nidesalay, 1989 Devanagari lipi tatha hindi vartani
ka manakikaran. Delhi: Education Department, Govt. of India. [The
official line on script conventions, not all of which find favour in
the present manual. Hindi medium.]
If that picture is correct, then we really have two orthographies that
use two different sets of conjuncts (one smaller than the other), and
potentially two different sets of half forms. It's not such much the
existence of conjuncts or half forms that matters, as the decision to
use them in a given orthography.
>In Windows Vista, Uniscribe is being updated to support either
>convention. The font implementation will determine which is used by
>default.
>
Assuming that Unicode supports both orthographies, it seems to me that
the priority is to support each one correctly on its own. Arranging for
coded character sequences created for one orthography to be convertible
mechanically and reliably to the other orthography (e.g. at rendering
time) is certainly nice, but I am nervous that this could compromise the
reliable support of one or the other orthography.
> One can always force the I to go after the killed consonant by
>inserting ZWNJ; e.g., < TTA, VIRAMA, ZWNJ, TTHA, I >.
>
>
It seems to me that you are going beyond what is currently spelled out
by Unicode. The discussion about the joiners does not mention how they
interact with vowel signs. Rule R15 says "when the dependent vowel I is
used ... it is always written to the extreme left of the orthographic
syllable." But we do not have a definition of orthographic cluster, and
the discussion of ZWNJ does not say something like "ZWNJ terminates an
orthographic cluster", it only describes the effect on the adjoining
consonants.
Eric.
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