I don't consider myself an expert on Indic scripts, but here is what I know related to the half vs halant forms being discussed.
ISCII expects an 'Explicit Halant' to be used to display the halant forms of consonants. Sample sequence that is expected to display the first consonant in its halant form: Ka Halant Halant Ta -> KaHalant Ta While to retain the half form of a consonant, a 'Soft Halant' is expected, thus: Ka Halant Nukta Ta -> KaHalf Ta Somnath Kundu-ji, Would you please give an example in Bangla (a conjunct, or a word that contains this conjunct) where the 'half' form of Ta is used, and how this half form is expected to be displayed? I believe Bangla does not have distinct half forms (as in Devanagari/Gujarati); and that halant forms are hence also considered half forms. The khanda Ta is used in both cases as shown by words like: mahotsav (where the khanda Ta is used as half form), vidyut (where the khanda Ta is used as a halant form) etc. Also, Bangla is known to have continued its use of the traditionally rich conjunct ligatures it shapes into. So the use of such halant forms (as half forms) is limited to displaying conjuncts that are not natively used by the Bangla language. Thanks, -apurva -----Original Message----- From: Doug Ewell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2002 4:12 PM To: Unicode List Cc: Somnath Kundu Subject: Re: Bengali script - where is "khanda ta"? <snip> This mailing list gets a LOT of questions asking why Indic half-consonants and other forms (such as khanda-ta) aren't separately encoded in Unicode. The Unicode model for Indic scripts is supposedly based on ISCII-1988. How were these problems handled in ISCII? Do users of ISCII have the same problems? Are there significant differences between the ISCII and Unicode approach to these issues, and if so, should Unicode spell out more explicitly what those differences are? (The FAQ talks rather generally about "in some cases" and "in other cases.") Or are these questions being asked by people who have previously used ASCII-hacked font solutions instead of ISCII? -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California
