Re: [WMASTERS] Tamil language and glyph codes standardization

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

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Selva wrote on 6 Oct 97:
>  My thoughts are as follows:
>  [A] Let us define a basic set of glyphs for Tamil (without granthas)
>      in contiguous slots and call it the standard primary 
>      'tamil space' set and then
>      define an extended set of glyph codes needed for non-tamil 
>      characters and put them in the 'non-tamil space'. 

It may be recalled that in my first posting version 1.4,
I have indicated in the footnote that, as a 8-bit encoding 
scheme with 256 glyphs, the scheme contains a mixture
of glyphs of roman, grantha and tamil (all the
arabic numerals, roman alphabets, punctuation marks,
tamil glyphs and some grantha glyphs). For this reason, 
I have labelled the scheme explicitly as 
8-bit ROMAN-TAMIL-GRANTHA scheme.
Please consult the gif again at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5180/charset14.gif

The encoding scheme in full was never at any time 
labelled as a pure tamil encoding scheme. It was a collection
of glyphs of different languages to facilitate tamil texts to be 
handled in several situations: email, transliterated tamil, 
webpages, electronic archiving, optional save in unicode etc etc.
(Those who have carefully read my earlier postings must
have noticed that, right from the beginning I was referring 
to a polyvalent font scheme and not a "pure tamil scheme")
I guess Mani's recent posting best summarises the design
goals.
Given the above picture, it has been a mystery to me as to
why people get all charged up and keep labelling the scheme
as a "pure tamil scheme". 

Selva writes:
> Examples of glyph codes for Tamil space:
>
> 12 uyir (���)
>  1 aytham (�˰�)
> 18 mey (���) 
> 18 'akaram ERiya mey (���� ��� ���)
> 6 diacritical markers for 'aa, i, ii, e, E, ai)
>  2 for tamil di and dii
> 36 ukaram Ukaaram ERiya meykaL (��� ���� ��ˍ�) 
> 10 tamil numerals including 0. (if we want to claim
>   *full* compatibility with Unicode, then we may have to
>   reserve 3 more spaces for 10,100,1000.

I presume by diacritical markers, Selva is referring to modifiers.
The above collection of glyphs IS EXACTLY what is there in the
version 1.4 (only difference is slots allocation for 10, 100 and 1000).
So I really do not see any problem in glyph choices for tamil part.

On the grantha part the only difference is inclusion of "ksha" and
"sri".
Can someone clarify pleaase if, with the most recent proposal
of Selva, the differences between his proposal and version 1.4
are just these two grantha glyphs and specific slot assignments? 
I would like to get the present situation straight.

If it helps in any way, I am prepared to redraw the
chart 1.4 in full (indicating all 256 slots) with SPECIFIC
COLOR CODING for different components there: 
arabic numerals,
roman alphabets,
punctuation and other marks (such as copyright sign and others)
tamil alphabet part (incl. tamil numerals)
grantha part
I thought the composition was obvious and labelling was adequate.

Kalyan


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