Re: Indic diacritics (ISO 15919) in Mac OS

From: N. Ganesan (naa.ganesan@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 28 2010 - 10:03:46 CST

  • Next message: N. Ganesan: "Re: Indic diacritics (ISO 15919) in Mac OS"

    On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Lee Collins <lcollins@apple.com> wrote:
    >
    >> I have a Mac question.
    >> Recent Microsoft s/w  in Vista, Windows 7
    >> natively support ISO 15919 diacritics.
    >> Is it the case with Apple Mac OS most recent
    >> versions?
    >
    > Yes. They have been supported on Mac OS for several versions now and are also supported on the currently shipping iPhone OS.
    >
    > Lee
    >

    Thanks, Lee. That's great!

    Can Apple iPhone and iPad tablet, until the time it starts showing
    the Indic scripts, use ISO 15919 diacritics to show
    the web pages browsed and for emails in them?
    i.e., as a fall-back option in mobiles when Tamil fonts
    are not present.

    Also, even when all Indic fonts show up in iPhone, iPad,
    there will be a sizable section in neighboring states,
    or those who do not read Indic scripts in schools.
    And adding an *option* in Mobiles to choose ISO15919
    Latin diacritics for Indic text display will help them a lot.

    There is a good percentage of Indian school children
    who are in English medium schools, and do not
    use Indic, and they are comfortable with English script.
    Besides, the mobile technology in every one's hand
    puts digraphia for India, just as Chinese and Japanese
    use digraphia - use pinyin-like roman script inputting
    to show Chinese picture-letters in texting.
    Same thing in India - most people use
    Roman inputting to generate Indic script display.

    So, having a ISO 15919 Latin display for
    Indic texts in moblies will be a boon
    (a) as a fall-back option when Indic text
    fonts is not possible commercially
    in some locales and (b) for those who
    want to read Indic text in Latin script.

    N. Ganesan

    >> This will be important as just now
    >> Romanisation of India's scripts gets
    >> started as a sizable section of Indian
    >> schools are teaching in Latin script.
    >>
    >> Adding ISO 15919 std. to National eGovernance  Plan
    >> (NeGP) is possible. This standard is important in 3 areas
    >>
    >> (a) Implementation of ISO 15919 for Indic text
    >> for programming use & statistical analyses
    >> in DB of land records, voter lists, ...
    >> - analyses can be script based or area (e.g. districts) based.
    >>
    >> (b) Exchange of files in ISO 15919 within India,
    >> many know 3 or 4 languages, but not as many scripts.
    >>
    >> (c) Mobile applications where Unicode Indic fonts
    >> are non-existent or when a user dos not want
    >> without rendering (e.g., when u, uu uyirmey
    >> are shown in the well known Grantha way,
    >> people may avoid it by choosing Latin way.)
    >>
    >> N. Ganesan

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