And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

On Thokks who don't give a Frigg, under the mistletoe

Sorting It All Out — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 23:55:44 GMT

I was thinking about Balder yesterday. Balder is a fascinating character in Norse mythology, and a good

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

Michael S. Kaplan — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 05:24:25 GMT

Tamil improving itself has nothing to do with its encoding, because language is not just encoding.

But Unicode is on record as rejecting these schemes, so eventually the illogic of waste is the factor....

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

CAPital Z — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 04:32:40 GMT

East Asian Language encoding dilema and Balinese are not pre-dated problems.

Anyhow, yes whatever written in current unicode will be unreadable. But that's the evolution right?. Latin encoding had so many perfections during the course of Computer. Tamil is just a baby in computing. So now the Tamil doesn't get the chance to improve just because, what is already there has to be THE ONE.

So Tamil can never improve itself in the future. Because Unicode Consortium will never accept any modification to what is already there!

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

Michael S. Kaplan — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:36:51 GMT

CAPital, this is hardly breaking the rules of Unicode.

In some cases, there were legacy standards that pre-dated Unicode which had to be represented. And other cases where you see rule breaking, the actual proposals give the justifications (as do the block descriptions in the Unicode book, in many cases).

Did you look at the links I put in? They explain many of the reasons why strategies like TUNE are simply too late and do involve a re-encoding of a script already encoded, and would set bzck Tamil computing by 5-10 years or more.

Even just looking at your blog (and the many other Tamil blogs out there), it would invalidate all of this existing data!

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

CAPital Z — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:15:07 GMT

In the sets of Latin, there are encoded characters as à, á, â, ã, å [for the European languages]. It is encoded as a single character. Meanwhile, the same glyphs are present seperately, like a, ̀, ́, ˆ, ˜, ˚.

So only for Tamil like scripts [South Asian languages] similar encoding is denied.

East Asian languages did encoded their all characters. And you know the famous Chinese governments stand about all chinese character encoding.

Most recently, the new language to be included in Unicode, Balinese break the rules of Unicode. As you said, it did not only encode the "basic abugida" but did others as well. You may have already seen it in the new Unicode Charts.

Even in Tamil, your point is right that basic abugida is enough to display the most characters. But the "ku கு, kuu கூ" [and similar for all other characters] are almost totally different than the basic abugidas.

I'm not saying TUNE is the best thing, but Tamil do lack the efficiency of what other similar anguages have in Unicode.

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CAPital

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

Michael S. Kaplan — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 09:21:36 GMT

Actually, it did not. It encoded an abugida.

The rules that you envisage are not actually rules of Unicode, which may be the problem here? You are expecting promises to be kept that were never made. :-(

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

CAPital — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 09:13:58 GMT

I am not trying to say that only the ka + dot should have been encoded and not the other. Then it would be almost impossible to display the other.

All I'm saying is Unicode already broke its rules. So to other European and East Asian langues.

IF it did NOT break its rules for ANY language, then I wouldn't even say a word.

So it looks like whoever had the power, broke the rules according to their "standardization" policies.

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

Michael S. Kaplan — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 09:01:01 GMT

See also this post from over a year ago, which makes some additional related points, ones that I wish those who want to set Tamil implementations back by years would pay more attention to....

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

Michael S. Kaplan — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 08:55:07 GMT

Actually, no -- that is not how abugidas work. But see this post and this one for more info on the approach that was taken in the encoding, and why it is okay for you to not agree with the approach and still be able to work in Unicode....

re: And if your language starts playing a different TUNE

CAPital — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 08:46:58 GMT

When you say:

///This post brought to you by க் (U+0b95 U+0bcd, a.k.a. TAMIL LETTER KA + TAMIL SIGN VIRAMA, a.k.a. TAMIL KA puLLi, a.k.a. TAMIL LETTER K)///

I right away notice that there is NO Tamil sign called VIRAMA!

In fact Tamil language doesn't add the dot to form the 'ka' sound. the form you have presented is the original form. the letter without the dot is NOT the basic letter. So you can see Unicode is already broken its rules of ONLY encoding the basic characters!

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CAPital