Re: [Indic-computing-devel] [review-request] Indic computing handbook: devanagari

[Jyotirmoy S. <jyo...@ya...>]

--- Krishnamurthy Nagarajan <kn...@ya...> wrote:
> 
> --- "Dr. U.B. Pavanaja" <pav...@vi...>
> wrote:
> 
> >  
> > > Consonant list - 'ksha', 'tra' and 'Gna' are
> > missing
> > > (actually I prefer the Roman phonetic equivalent
> > > 'thra' instead of 'tra').
> > 
> > They are actually combinations. You can get their
> > independent 
> > display forms by using the GSUB rule of opentype
> > font (the 
> > lookup Akhand).
> 
> Well, one may 'combine' glyphs to create 'ksha' but
> it
> stands on its own as a consonant (it has its own
> 'gunintha' in Kannada and Telugu and Hindi) and its
> pronunciation can't be systhesised from say 'ka' and
> 'sha'. So, it has to be a separate consonant. For
> historical reasons, one should include all the
> letters
> of the script (so, better to include thra and Gna).


Ksha, Tra, Gna's are not consonants. These are
conjuncts, consisting of two (or more) consonants with
a HALANT in between.

The general rule for combination of two consonants is
this:
 CONSONANT_1 HALANT CONSONANT_2 -> HALF_CONSONANT_1
CONSONANT_2

The right hand-side is a composite character. Conjunts
like Ksha, Tra, Jna etc are special cases of these
composite characters,or, you can say that the conjunts
are some exceptions, wherein the consituents
consonants merge to form a totally new shape(glyph).

Character codes like ISCII, Unicode etc shouldn't
bother about  these conjuncts. It's the particular
open type font which should take care of these. If the
open-type font is unavailable, we need a converter to
translate the character codes to the glyphs codes.

  Jyotirmoy



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