Please also look at the Indic FAQ page http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/.
Other FAQ pages may also be helpful.
Note that the Unicode Standard is online on the Unicode site, so if you
don't have a copy you can read it there.
Mark
—————
Δός μοι ποῦ στῶ, καὶ κινῶ τὴν γῆν — Ἀρχιμήδης
[http://www.macchiato.com]
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Hudson" <tiro@tiro.com>
To: <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 01:21
Subject: Re: No proper representation of Devnagari in Unicode
> At 00:22 11/1/2001, Arjun Aggarwal wrote:
>
> >The Unicode character set in it's current form does not support Devnagari
> >well.It has no half characters for the Devnagari script.
> >It is just like not having e a d f in the roman(latin) script.
> >
> >This particular aspect renders it useless to be used by anyone including
> >programmers.
>
> Please read the section of the Unicode Standard regarding shaping of Indic
> scripts in general and Devanagari in particular. Half-forms do not need to
> be encoded because they are handled at the glyph processing level, rather
> than at the character level. So, for example, the Unicode character that
is
> used to encode the consonant 'ga' is rendered appropriately as a
full-form,
> half-form or as part of a conjunct ligature depending on the context and
> the glyphs and layout features available in a particular font. This glyph
> shaping is handled by intelligent fonts, working with complex script
> engines at the system or application level. These fonts contain
> substitution and positioning lookups that render the correct forms and
> position diacritic marks correctly; the best known formats are OpenType
> (MS, Adobe) and AAT (Apple, formerly known as GX).
>
> The full-form glyphs that are used to represent consonant characters in
the
> Unicode charts are simpy representative of the abstract character and do
> not imply that this specific form only is encoded.
>
> John Hudson
>
> Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
> Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com
>
> I see this guy named Typography in the shower one morning,
> the lightning bolt of epiphany striking as he rubs the suds from
> his eyes, 'That's It! I'll redefine myself - she'll have to notice me!'
> Dean Allen, www.textism.com
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Nov 01 2001 - 12:27:18 EST