--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Ishida" <ishida@...> wrote:

> > suzmccarth wrote:
>
> > > I think the important factor was the way the users thought of

the

> > > characters -- as syllabograms.
> >
> > Well, my Tamil student brought his pen and paper matrix of
> > syllabagrams to school with him clutched in his hot little
> > hand and it certainly can be found on the internet. This is
> > one that I have copied onto my site. It wasn't hard to find.
>
>
> > suzmccarth also wrote:
>
> > John. I appreciate your detailed answers but wish to delve
> > deeper if I may. Tamil also has an array, a matrix of
> > syllables, a syllabary, so they call it. Tamil also has
> > fewer phonemes than other Indic languages, both Indic and
> > Dravidian. It has fewer syllables than Korean. I realize
> > that the large number of Indic scripts is probably the
> > biggest argument against precomposed units.
> >
> > The old typewriter input method, which we also used, had
> > visual sequence input and while useless on the internet and
> > no good for ligatures, shaping and rendering has a certain
> > logic to it - it imitated handwriting.
>
> Hello suzmcarth,
>
> We have an *encoding* for Tamil in Unicode, largely influenced,

rightly or

> wrongly, by previous approaches to encoding Northern Indian

scripts. I

> don't think we don't want a proliferation of new encodings taking

us back to

> the old problems of lack of interoperability.
>
> A key point in my mind is that what you are concerned about is more

related

> to how the users (such as the children you have come across)

*input* Tamil.

> That is quite a separate question from the encoding model used.
>
> In CJK you can use input methods that are sound oriented (eg

pinyin), shape

> oriented (eg. Changjie), derived from roman transcription (romaji)

or native

> alphabetic transcription (eg. Bopomofo) or native syllabic (eg.

hiragana)

> but they all produce the same codes. Latin keyboards come in

various

> different layouts, but are capable of producing the same codes. So

there is

> nothing, technically, that prevents the development of a keyboard

or even

> input method that provides an approach based on alternative models.
>
> I must say, though, that I'm not clear how a matrix-based keyboard

would

> much be different, in practice, from the current default input

method that

> is closely related to the encoding. I assume that you don't mean

that there

> should be separate keys for each syllable?
>
> RI
>

First, thank you all.

Next, yes, Tamil does have a syllabary. And, yes, I have used
several input methods Windows 98 and Windows XP for many languages so
I have tried them - Chinese and Tamil, Korean, Japanese, etc., etc.

I have seen how the Pinyin Input method for Chinese provides a
powerful tool for literacy. The child sees the display of English
letters and can read Pinyin. The child then chooses the correct
Chinese character. It is a thing of beauty. I do see that the
encoding for Tamil may not have to change but I do feel that a better
input method must be developed before I can recommend that the
Windwos XP support is adequate for use in the multilingual
classroom. However, Chinese and Korean are now adequate.

Suzanne McCarthy

> ============
> Richard Ishida
> W3C
>
> contact info:
> http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
>
> W3C Internationalization:
> http://www.w3.org/International/