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Dear Muthu:
Now that we had some discussions on version 1.2, I would like to
move ahead and put the next revision 1.3 incorporating the
points raised recently.The revised version 1.3 is available under
the URL:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5180/charset13.gif
As has been pointed out by you, Kumar Kumarappan and others,
there is consensus to keep only the grantha ones along with the
basic tamil character glyphs. For the time being I would like to
drop my stressing of having the diacritics and the old style characters
in the char. encoding scheme. I had said enough and I am getting
tired. We all need to make compromises to reach consensus.
Keeping very much the format of version 1.2, I have now reshuffled
the glyphs as per the ordering that you wanted to have:
> The following sequence seems logical to me :
> first - the modifiers (kokkis, kombus, kaiyakaram)
> uyirs - a to aq (or ak or q - whatever ;-))
> akaram Eriya uyirs - (ka to na)
> di & dI (I just wish these are not this unique ;-))
> ukaram Eriya uyirs - (ku to nu)
> UkAram Eriya uyirs - (kU to nU)
> mey's
> This is what I wanted to send you in a GIF. Assists a great deal in
> sorting.
I have also incorporated your desire to have the grantha characters
in the mei form also (with the dot as is, ish, ih, ij ,..) along with
the
akaram Eriya form (sa, ha, ja,...). But I still kept in the 128-159
slots.
The grantha 'sri' is now at slot 160. So it may or may not show up.
Tamil alphabet glyphs start at slot 161. I still think it will be a
good idea
to keep the tamil character glyphs in the slots 161-259 so that
the tamil text part will be in secure situation even under worst
scenario. Logically also the first two rows (128-159) can be
labelled as the "zone to take care of special interests/needs".
> Yes, I'd like to hear more on this as I have not seen problems
> with these slots with Word or Word Perfect. Also, could
> Dr. Srinivasan and/or Ravi comment on why you think this is
> happening ? It may take us to the root of the problem.
It would me nice if we can understand the origin of all problems.
Except for a handful of people like you, Nagu and others there
are not many in the present ring who can engage in detailed
technical discussions and figure out ways of sorting out the root.
This may take a while and there is no guarantee that there are
reliable solutions. We are not here to assist and sort out
software problems of Microsoft or Claris.
So it may not be a bad idea, in my opinion, if we simply block
of these slots and go ahead. Right now, we just have enough
slots to put in all the glyphs we choose to have.
An appeal as before: Please have a close and calm look at this
revised version 1.3 and post your comments -positive and negative.
There is one specific point that remains to be sorted out:
This concerns the "definition" of the slots that are now left
vacant - marked with X in a slashed background in version 1.3.
Should they be classified as "closed slots where no one can use"
or "user-defined" type so that special applications can use these
slots to place required glyphs. I mentioned already some possible
use of such "user-defined slots".
In any scheme, it is good to have a few slots vacant so that, in
future, if we want to add some new glyphs for whatever reason -
all existing electronic archives need not have to be trashed.
I think we have travelled enough in the tunnel and start seeing some
light.
So I am trying to be optimistic that we may NOT have to go to versions
1.999 to reach consensus of the majority of those -who chose to
participate in the discussions.
I agree with Bala's statement: "any standard is better than no standard"
No scheme can ever be perfect too. As Prof. Hart said, in all
probability
we may have to re-evaluate the scheme in a decade.
Kalyan
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