Re: Request about Bengali/Bangla

From: Abdul Malik (AbdulMalik@btinternet.com)
Date: Wed Sep 20 2000 - 12:31:08 EDT


----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Everson" <everson@egt.ie>
To: "Unicode List" <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 10:30 AM
Subject: Request about Bengali/Bangla

> BDS 1520:2000 contains a BANGLA LETTER KHANDATA and it has been proposed
> for addition to the UCS. I am at the WG2 meetings in Athens where the
> character is being discussed, but we don't know how to evaluate it.

A representative of the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (the
instigator of the proposal) should be better placed to answering these
questions than me, anyway...

> What is this character and how is it used?

KhandoTa is a form of the letter Ta. It is the form Ta takes when it has no
inherent vowel. It occurs when final and medial, but never the initial
letter of a word. It is equivalent to Ta virama. Ta with a visible virama is
only needed for illustrative purposes, kandaTa being used in its place in
all Bengali words, except when it forms a conjunct form.

For example in a standard without KhandaTa, there are two different forms
the sequence Ta Virama Ma need to take i.e. khandoTa_Ma or the
Ta/Ma_conjunct_form. As BSD1520:2000 does not include any ligation control
characters other than Virama, it is necessary to include KhandaTa as a
separate letter to make the two previously mentioned forms.

> Another question, is does BDS 1520:2000 completely replace BDS 1520:1997,
> or is the old standard still valid (and being implemented)?

BDS 1520:1997 is based on a font encoding. It is the standard currently used
in the products of Proshika Computer Systems and AdarshaBangla Technologies
Inc. It is also the encoding used in many web sites.
BDS 1520:2000 is a complete replacement, being based on the ISO/IEC10646
character encoding model. AFAIK it is yet to receive a real world
implementation.
BDS 1520:2000 seems immature as it does not include any encoding principles
or rendering rules, for example, how is Bengali zophola to be formed? Is it
formed from Ya or YYa?

> What are the implications for interoperability between this standard and
ISCII standards?

As BDS 1520 does not currently have an encoding model to refer to, one can
not say. e.g. to form Ka_halant Ka:
in Unicode :- Ka virama ZWNJ Ka
In ISCII :- KA Virama Virama Ka
In BDS :- ??

Regards

Abdul



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