I have to say my first reaction was to think exactly the same things as Marco.

I think the transliterated input method can be useful for non-Tamil speakers, and I agree that this is a nice little application of such.

But I think that Tamil speakers would be much better off directly using a Tamil keyboard. Why go through another script?

RI


============
Richard Ishida
W3C

contact info:
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/

W3C Internationalization:
http://www.w3.org/International/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marco Cimarosti [mailto:marco.cimarosti@...]
> Sent: 09 June 2004 11:31
> To: 'qalam@yahoogroups.com'
> Subject: RE: functional classification of writing systems //
> Korean; Turkish F-type kbd.
>
> suzmccarth wrote:
> > http://www.jaffnalibrary.com/tools/
> >
> > This site uses a transliteration system. 'Insert your
> phrase in plain
> > English' means use the English alphabet. Then the Tamil appears in
> > the other box, if you have the unicode Tamil font
> installed. So you
> > can see the display of the English alphabet as you type and
> the Tamil
> > happens in the other box with all the reshaping, reordering and
> > ligatures. Once you know the rules it really works.
>
> Gulp! This is NOT what you had in mind when you talked abut a
> Tamil "syllabic" input, is it? Else, it would probably be
> most the Euro-centric thing I've seen in years...
>
> Would you be happy if someone proposed you to enter English
> by typing Arabic characters on the upper box and having
> English automatically "happening in the other box with all
> that barbaric clumsy spelling of yours"?
>
> Would you really be happy if the only way to write the above
> sentence on a computer was typing it in a stranger script, like this:
>
> ??? ?? ?? ???? ??? ?????? ??????? ?? ?? ???? ??????? ???
> ??????? ??????
> ???????? ?? ? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ??????? ????????????
> "??????? ??? ? ???
> ???? ??? ?? ??? ???????? ?????? ?????? ?? ?????"?
>
> _ Marco
>
>
>
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