Dennis,

The simple answer to your question is that there is no accepted standard as
of yet. What we can see is that the set is evolving...towards the simple
side. The 'ng' as your n with a g's tail is called, the 'mg', the ns and ms
with dots over all seem to be being abandoned for the m with underdot, n
with underdot; h with underdot is almost never found.

In the USA it seems likely that the evenutal resolution will be to abandon
diacriticals altogether. Nobody knows what do do with them anyway and they
just pronounce the words according to their best guess or the way they heard
it from another...same way we learn English. Except for dictionary lookups
this isn't really a problem and my bet is that the dictionaries will 'give'
first.

Take Care;
and may your life be long and happy!
Michael Olds

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis W. K. Khong [mailto:denniskhong@...]
Sent: Monday, December 27, 2004 6:32 AM
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Pali] Re: Romanised paali character sets





Dear Derek,

Thanks for the reply. Sorry I didn't make it clear that I wasn't
asking about font/typeface sets. I am interested in character sets (or
Romanised Pali alphabets). I think PTS has a character which looks
like an 'n' but with a tail like a 'g'. Some character sets don't have
a '.' below 'm', while another have both. I would like to know how are
they different and whether a standard set has evolved.

Dennis

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Derek" <derekacameron@...> wrote:
>
> Hi, Dennis,
>
> > Can someone here please point me to a webpage or explain how are
> > they different, and which is the standard now?
>
> I was also interested in this question of standards a while back. I
> summarized my findings as follows:
>
> "There are two ways of representing the roman characters with
> diacritical marks we need to display romanized Pali on the internet.
> One way is to use a private encoding system. This is the approached
> adopted by fonts such as VRI, CSX, and Times Normyn. The other way
> is to use the Unicode system of encoding. In Unicode, the ranges of
> characters we need are called Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin
> Extended A, and Latin Extended Additional. All standard fonts now
> support Basic Latin and Latin-1 Supplement, and many support Latin
> Extended A. It is the need for Latin Extended Additional that limits
> our choice. For a list of fonts that support Latin Extended
> Additional, see Alan Wood's Web Site. Note that not all fonts
> provide representations ("glyphs") of all characters in this range.
> For the representation of Pali characters in plain text without a
> special font, the Velthuis system has become standard."
>
> That's from my "Taste of Pali" page at:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/derekacameron/pali.html
>
> Derek.









- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Homepage] http://www.tipitaka.net
[Send Message] pali@yahoogroups.com
Paaliga.na - a community for Pali students
Yahoo! Groups members can set their delivery options to daily digest or web
only.
Yahoo! Groups Links