For some of the lesser-known languages of Nepal, Devanagari script is used but due to phonological differences it gets extended in ways not found in the better-known languages of India that use Devanagari. There are two specific issues that need to be addressed: (1) Limbu glottal; (2) nukta on vowels.
(1) The first problem is the need for a glottal character for Limbu (ie, Limbu language written in Devanagri script, as opposed to Limbu script, which already has a symbol for glottal). The Limbu language committee has decided that this character should be represented using what looks pretty much like the IPA glottal symbol (U+0294), though in a Devanagari font it would have to be designed to match Devanagari characters. The question is whether there is any problem using U+0294, and whether proposing a Devanagari-specific character would be a better option. One particular problem I can think would be likely to occur would be rendering engines such as Uniscribe or whatever is coded into host environments like Java for "Hindi" support would not be able to cope with U+0294 occuring in the midst of a Devanagari sequence. E.g. I could easily imagine something like Uniscribe failing to reordering U+093F before a glottal U+0294. Should we try to educate and convince implementers of the need to allow U+0294 to be reckoned as part of the Devanagari script, or should we propose a new Devanagari glottal character? (I guess on the principle of unifying across languages but not across scripts, it could be argued that a new character should be proposed.) (2) The second problem involves nukta (U+093C). In better-known languages, nukta can occur only on consonants, but for certain lesser-known languages, it can occur on vowels as well. Yet some implementations might not recognise a sequence like < consonant, vowel, nukta > as valid. For instance, I understand that if Uniscribe encountered such a sequence, it would assume you've left out a consonant immediately before the nukta, and it would display a dotted circle to indicate where a missing base character should go. Our people in South Asia have told me the nukta can occur on vowels in the range U+093e..U+094c, though my contact has told me that he himself has only seen this on 093E, 0940, 0941 and 094B. So, I'm curious to know what implementations people know of that *would* or *would not* handle nukta on vowels, as is needed for such languages. - Peter --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485 E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
