Re: [WMASTERS] Re: Old Orthography, response to Kalyan

[Leong Kok Yong <kokyong@irdu.nus.sg>]

it seems like there seems to be 2 camps of thoughts..

(1) Keep old styles out of the proposed code set.

(2) Allocated codepoints for the old styles in the proposed codeset.

Camp 1 says that by encoding two glyphs (old & new form) as two
codepoints will cause duplication especially when it comes to sorting and
other software operation.

Camp 2 says that the old styles is very important especially for ancient
Tamil literature works. So we need one codeset (or rather fontset) that
that can allows a publisher to represent both old and new glyphs. Keeping
them separate cause much confusion when one needs to use more than one
fonts to see old and new style letters.

The only way out of this deadlock situation is to ask ourselves this
question?
Are we trying to encode glyphs or characters?

If we choose to encode only characters, 
A character can have many glyphs - new style, old style.
but it will still be encoded as one unique codepoint only.
(One codeset using two fonts)

However, if we choose to encode glyphs,
old and new style letters will have different codepoints.
(One codeset using only one font)


>From a desktop publishing point of view, using two fonts for the same
codeset to write old and new style letters does not seems too difficult. 
Most wordproccessor allows you to specify different fonts for different
text paragraphs. 

But when you bring this to the web, the user can still switch the fonts
accordingly when you view the html doc. The only drawback here is one may
need to resort to using the <FONT FACE> tag to indicate the preferred font
face to use to display a certain part of the document when both styles are
used in the same document. Is this solution too much of a compromise in
the eyes of many people? 


There is no right or wrong way here actually.  If anyone here is aware.
Chinese comes in Traditional and Simplfied forms.  Traditional = old form.
Simplified = new form. Because both forms are so entrenched in its use in
China and Taiwan, even Unicode, which say its should encoded characters
only, does not do so for Chinese. A character with new and old form are
given two code point in Unicode!





On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Nagarajan Chinnasamy wrote:

> Dear Bala,
> 
> Unicode has the concept of ligatures. It says those old codes optionally
> **ligate** in old styles.
> 
> So, Unicode did not leave old style **forms**. Because its a way of
> rendering
> the letters. Unicode just bothers about encoding characters not the
> glyphs.
> 
> But the table we have is a collection of Glyphs (though we might try to
> keep as much **characters** as possible). Yes. We need them. Only if we
> are particular about showing them in Old Style.
> 
> But if we keep separate codes for those old forms it will unnecessarily
> confuse the text processing(any application that tries to make sense out
> of the text!) applications.
> 
> What anybody will lose if you show "a,nnn,nnnaa" as "a,nnn,nnna,kaal".
> Do
> they get any other meaning out of it??? 
> 
> The text is Old in its content not in its Letters.
> 
> NOTE: I Did Not say anything about Tamil Numerals. Will write about it
> latter.
> 
> anbudan,
> nagu.
> 
> 
> 
> Bala Pillai wrote:
> > 
> > ________________________________________________
> > 
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> > ________________________________________________
> > 
> > At 06:42 PM 9/15/97 +0000, Dr.K. Kalyanasundaram wrote:
> > 
> > >Old style numerals were proposed for two reasons:
> > > i) to provide compatibility with UNICODE 2.0 and
> > >ii) for possible use in electronic archiving of
> > >ancient tamil literature.
> > 
> > Kalyan and anybody else who may know:
> > 
> > How cast in stone is UNICODE 2.0 as it applies to Tamil script? Is it not
> > possible that our discussions would affect a revised version of UNICODE 2.X
> > ? My limited knowledge of UNICODE Tamil deliberations suggest that it did
> > not get much (not anybody's fault mind you) airing.
> > 
> > anbudan.../bala
> > 
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