suzmccarth wrote:

> Well I can't post a 2 line link so follow Tamil to the Tamil
> syllable chart - this is what my students are telling me is the
> Tamil writing system. It is a 12 x 18 array.

12 × 18 = 216

12 + 18 = 30

Which solution did you say was better? :-)

IMHO, what the users think about they writing system is quite irrelevant
when designing a computer encoding for that writing system. Unduly taking in
consideration user thoughts brought Unicode to make the engineering *error*
(again, IMHO) of encoding Ethiopic and Cherokee as if they were katakana
(not to mention the 70,000+ Chinese "characters" which could have been
avoided with a "composing radicals" approach).

What the users think or do not think only becomes important when designing
*user* *interfaces* (in this case, keyboards and their software
counterpart), i.e. the part of computer systems which users will interact
with.

_ Marco