--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Dunbar
<hippietrail@...> wrote:

> --- Marco Cimarosti <marco.cimarosti@...>
> wrote:
> > Richard Wordingham wrote:
> > > [...]
> > > > the <DELETE> key would erase the whole "ki"
> > > > cluster. It is never possible to place the
> > > > cursor "between" a consonant and its matra.
> > >
> > > That is horrible.
> >
> > That's always been also my impression. However, *if*
> > this behavior is really what Indian users want,
> > well...
> >
> > Thinking about it, this is exactly what happens in
> > Western scripts with "accented" letters, and I don't
> > find it innatural (probably just because I am used
> > to it). Typing in Italian I keep using the wrong
> > accent all the time (my dialect misses the phonetic
> > distinctions marked by accents, so I only rely on
> > memory for which accent should be used), still it
> > doesn't seem strange that the DELETE and BACKSPACE
> > kill both the accent and the letter carrying it.
>
> Up to Windows 2000 backspace and delete operated on
> codepoints but due to demand from users of these
> languages (so I believe) this was improved for Windows
> XP which has much better support for Indic languages.
> I find it annoying too but I'm not a native user of
> these languages and I'm happy they are getting what
> they want. In the meantime it's not hard to find an
> old editor which still works in the old way.

I do like editing a syllable at a time for Indic scripts. It feels right.
I believe that an earlier Uniscribe version allowed editing piece
by piece. However, I thought that the later Uniscribe which
allowed editing by syllable only was an improvement. There is a
way to change Uniscribe versions for those who are particular
about it. SIL and someone else has an instruction page for this.

In French the "e" accent aigu always seems like a letter of its
own and the other accents are just incidental. In polytonic Greek
the accents have a different function. It wouldn't be right to say
that diacritics function in a similar fashion across languages.

Suzanne McCarthy