On Thu, 20 Apr 2017 11:17:05 -0700 Manish Goregaokar via Unicode <unicode@unicode.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 4:35 PM, Richard Wordingham via Unicode > <unicode@unicode.org> wrote: > > Is there consensus on how to count aksharas in the Devanagari > > script? The doubts I have relate to a visible halant in > > orthographic syllables other than the first. > I don't think there's consensus. I've found related discussion at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-indic/. The question of how to count was raised and not answered there. > On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 4:35 PM, > Richard Wordingham via Unicode <unicode@unicode.org> wrote: > > Is there consensus on how to count aksharas in the Devanagari > > script? The doubts I have relate to a visible halant in > > orthographic syllables other than the first. > I'm of the opinion that Unicode should start considering devanagari > (and possibly other indic) consonant clusters as single extended > grapheme clusters. Do Hindi speakers really think of orthographic syllables as characters? What may be useful is the concept of a definition of an orthographic syllable. It may be possible to get the information from a font - depending on the renderer - but a locale-dependent definition should be possible for use as a fall-back. Devanagari rules won't work for Tamil, and I think rules for Hindi and Nepali will be slightly different - <VIRAMA, ZWNJ> looks like a problem. The concept is possibly not useful in some Indic scripts - the concept won't work well in Thai, but will work in Pali in the Thai script, for both Pali orthographies. Richard.