RE: conjucts beginning with independent vowel?

[Peter_Constable]

On 01/17/2001 03:10:22 PM "AbdulMalik" wrote:

>In Bengali Vowel_A can form a conjunct with letter_Ya (Ya taking its
zophola
>form.)
>
>It has been suggested that this should be encoded as Vowel_A ZWJ Ya
>
>I believe that the series V ZWJ C is much more logical than V Virama C as
the
>semantics of virama are to suppress the vowel.

I had thought about this earlier, but forgot to include this among the
possibilities when I raised the question. Thanks for bringing it up.

 This matches the general use of ZWJ for requesting ligation, which UTC
decided to add to the semantics of ZWJ last year (thus it can be considered
an existing mechanism). But, it doesn't match the use of ZWJ in Indic
scripts for forcing half forms rather than conjuncts. This use of ZWJ isn't
needed for Syloti Nagri, which does not have half forms. Since that use is
applied to other Indic scripts, though, I don't know if it would be a
problem to introduce the other use of ZWJ for an Indic script.



- Peter


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Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
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