Suzanne McCarthy <suzmccarth at yahoo dot com> wrote:

> However, when I use the Pinyin input, I can click on one of the
> displayed syllables and it is input as text, but in Tamil IME I cannot
> - they are just a set of images. I have to now keystroke the English
> letters. So when I switch from Pinyin to Tamil the difference in the
> encoding model feels obvious, because one is clickable and one is not
> but maybe the syllable display in Tamil could be may to be clickable
> it just isn't.

That is a deficiency in the Tamil IME, not in the underlying encoding
model.

Later:

> I am typing my word list and if I backspace then sometimes previous
> words shift and two previous words lose their intervening space. I
> can never recreate this space with the cursor and space bar - I just
> have to retype those two words over again.

Again, this is a shortcoming in the Tamil IME. It has nothing to do
with whether Tamil should have been encoded as syllables or letters.

People are talking about encoding game pieces and ancient scripts (but
not private scripts, because they're private) because, as John said, the
major scripts of the world -- including Tamil -- are already encoded.
Developing a good keyboard input method for Tamil, another issue
entirely, apparently still has a way to go. Please don't mix these two
issues up. It would be like criticizing the encoding model of Tamil
because the paper on which the Tamil characters are printed is of low
quality and tears easily.

-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/