Re: Unicode for Brahmi-derived Scripts (was: Codes for internationa

--- Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Dunbar
> <hippietrail@...> wrote:
> > --- Doug Ewell <dewell@...> wrote:
>
> > Here's an example on-topic computer-related
> > question:
> >
> > What on earth is the correct way to encode Aung
> > San Suu Kyi's name in Unicode Burmese as written
> > on http://www.dassk.com/
>
> (da + e + aa + virama + ZWNJ 'Daw') a + e + aa + nga
> + virama + ZWNJ
> 'Aung'
> cha + na + virama + ZWNJ + visarga 'San' ca + u
> 'Suu'
> ka + virama + ra + nnya + virama + ZWNJ 'Kyi'
>
> Not that more obscure than 'edF eAac\ Sn\; su
> @kv\' in SEAsite's Myanmar1 font! (More legible in
> Internet Explorer than notepad, for a change.)
> What's the problem? The inconsistent way
> Unicode handles bracketing two-part dependent vowel
> <au>? That the Burmese consonants are named after
> their Indian rather than their Burmese
> pronunciations?

For me, hard parts were trying to figure out which
Unicode codepoints were needed to make the form which
looks like an umbrella or T, and the hows and whys of
the ZWNJ.

I actually tried to figure it out for this page:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1429756
A couple of years ago and never did know if I got it
right. Trying to do it without a working font was
another problem of course but SIL's graphite supports
it in a cumbersome way.

> I mention the phonetic, non-Unicode encoding because
> I don't have any Widows-compatible Unicode-encoded
> fonts for Burmese.
>
> Incidentally, is the Burmese 'visarga' really
> related to the Devanagari visarga?
>
> > And where can I read the *correct* ways to encode
> > exotic scripts in Unicode? Khmer, Burmese,
> > Tibetan, Sinhala have always eluded me.
>
>

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch10.pdf

> plus the charts, indexed by script at
> http://www.unicode.org/charts/
> . You might have to do some digging for the
> ordering of the various subscripts and superscripts,
> but for Burmese there's a clear table.

I'll look again but I always had trouble figuring out
what were ligatures, what they were assembled from,
and
where/why/how to use things such as ZWNJ.

Thanks for the answers!
Andrew Dunbar.

> Richard.
>
>
>
>

=====
http://en.wiktionary.org -- http://linguaphile.sf.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl





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