Re: Tibetan/Burmese/Khmer

From: lcollins@apple.com
Date: Thu Jan 16 1997 - 13:51:47 EST


>On the other hand in Cambodia there is no concept of virama transforming a
>consonant into its subjoined form.

The same argument could be made for Burmese, however, I spent 2 weeks in
Burma working with Burmese standards, language experts, and school
teachers to design a good UI for Burmese typing. I started with a
protoype of Burmese on the Mac that used the virama. All new users
actually preferred the virama implementation to having to learn
additional key positions for subscripts.

Also, flexible virtual keyboards can actually hide the implementation of
the virama from users.

>not inherent in the script. Furthermore I feel it complicates sorting and
>searching algorithms. The weight of a subscript/subjoined consonant is
>much less than the weight of a base consonant for sorting purposes.

I would argue that the subscripts complicate the sorting. You can
generate the proper subscript weight with a virama.

Lee



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