RE: [Freebangfont-devel] Khanda-ta and Ra-Yaphala

[Andy White]

> 
> OK, where would I find this beast ? (i.e. In what word ?) I 
> don't recall coming across it. Bangla is indeed "still waters 
> running deep"

What beast? I suppose you mean ikar_ta_hasanta_ta?
Well you would typically find it in an old books where the typesetter
had run out of khandatas or tata conjuncts.
Or do you mean where would you need ta+hasanta+something ?
Well, ta hasanta is often used when forming conjuncts with letters that
do not naturally combine with ta. In Bangla a khandata is usually used
in such a case, but when Assamese, Sanskrit or some other language is
written in the Bangla script, ta+hasanta+something  can be common.
 
> > ...The current idea is that this combination can be 
> >coded as Ra ZWJ Ya. And it would then follow
>> that 'A japhala aakar' can be coded as 
> > A+ZWJ+AAKAR The justification being that 'A+hasanta+...' is 
> > meaningless and in the sequence ra+hosonto+ya, the hosonto should 
> > apply to the ra and not to the ya.
> > More about this later.
> > 

(In the above 'A+ZWJ+AAKAR'should have read A+ZWJ+Ya+AAKAR)

> Hmm, this is a good suggestion too. What do you think its 
> weaknesses are ?

I don't mind what is finally chosen as long as Microsoft is happy to
adopt it. The reason being is that they have lead the way as far as
Indic Unicode & OT support are concerned. If they are seen to implement
Bangla then others are more likely to follow.

> It would have been nice to have had all this debugged before 
> the Unciode specs were publicised - I wonder if these 
> constant revisions will scare off "bigger" developers, or even users !
> 
Well it issues like this that caused Microsoft to delay Bangla
development in there OS, and is also the reason for the delay in
publishing a Bengali OT spec.


 Deepayan wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of an instance where 
> ra-yaphala is 
> used somewhere other than at the beginning of a word ?

I don't know of any native Bangla words, and I haven't got an Assami
dictionary at hand to look through. It certainly occurs in
transliterated words e.g. 'Borax' is spelled 'bo japhala ra japhala
aakar sa' in one dictionary I have.

Andy