Re: tamil character set choice for a font encoding scheme

["Dr.K. Kalyanasundaram" <kalyan@igcsun3.epfl.ch>]

Dear Vasu:
Thanks a lot for your prompt response.

>I like to point out a few problems, at least from the point of view of
> Tamil linguistics researchers, in the following transliteration chart
>Kalyan has suggested. 

There is a confusion here that I would like to clarify.
My proposal on possible tamil characters is very much confined to
a possible font encoding scheme for a 8-bit tamil font/DTP processing
softwares. I DID NOT want to discuss concurrently possible standard
scheme for writing transliterated/romanized form of tamil. 

In the first posting, I used inaimathi/anjal font to show
specifically the chosen uyirs, meis and uyirmeis. Since most of the
readers of tamilnet mailing list  (tamilnet@tamilnews.org.sg) may
not be using this tamil font,  in the follow up posting, I used the
plain-ASC based transliteration scheme (ADAMI/MADURAI)
so that the proposal can be read in total integrity. I may have been
sloppy in my plain ASC transliteration scheme. As I said above,
the purpose of the posting was NOT to discuss transliteration schemes.

A standard for the transliteration scheme for tamil is a topic by
itself.
that should also be decided soon. I am not sure if we want to debate
this topic concurrently.

In my presentation at the TamilNet'97
conference in Singapore, I did indicate that the "Library of Congress
Scheme using diacritical markers" is THE most ancient and widely
used scheme by major libraries and indologists all around the world.
 So it may not be a bad idea to simply adopt this scheme and avoid
'reinventing the wheel'. 

The main criticism against these translit. schemes using diacritical
markers is that one needs to have special fonts that allow adding 
the markers over the roman alphabets. Alternative approach is to use
transliteration schemes that are based on simple/plain ASCII. Many
of the software packages such as ITANS, MADURAI, ADHAWIN,
ANJAL invoke some form of transliteration scheme based on plain
ASCII. As you know, discussions in USENET newsgroups use 
extensively such plain ASCII scheme for reproducing tamil texts!!!

Most of the points you have raised in this posting are related
to whether or not one should stick to the good old Library of Congress
scheme with diacritical markers as compared to simple plain ASCII
based scheme. We can discuss the specifics of possible choices
for a plain ASCII scheme if we are going to adopt one such.

In my proposed character choices, I have specifically added these
diacritical
markers along with the tamil alphabets so that we can have ONE SINGLE
FONT that will allow SIMULTANEOUS typing of tamil text once
in tamil script and also in romanized/transliterated format.  The
impression
I got talking to Mr. Naa Govindaswamy at Singapore was that, he is also
in favour of an integrated font of this kind.

With best regards,
Kalyan

PS: For those of you who were not present in Singapore or misplaced
my presentation somewhere, it is always available in the WWW under
the URL
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5180/sintalk1.html
So please consult this page for details.