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

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On Tuesday 19 November 2002 11:08 pm, Kaushik Ghose wrote:
> > 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.
>
> So this is a hack on part of the printer, it should really be represented
> as khanda-ta or ta-y-ta-y ? If one were to transcribe this text into
> electronic form would one want to keep the ta-y-hashanta ? I would argue
> not, for the same reason that the printers font faces are not conserved
> -its the information, not the particular format that's being stored
> in the file. So we shouldn't need this (ta-hashanta) for this case, right
> ?

I guess the idea is that even if some features are rarely used, there must be 
a sensible way of representing everything that is typographically valid 
bengali.

That said, ikaar_ta_hasanta_ta doesn't really make much sense to me. On the 
other hand, ta_hasanta_ikaar_ta does make sense, and I don't see any obvious 
way to specify that (unless we drop khanda-ta, which is not acceptable).

> > 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.
>
> So tell me, if a font doesn't have a conjunct won't it default to
> displaying the hashonto form, so say in a font the glyph for ta-y-pa is
> not defined, won't the rendering be ta-hashanta-pa ? Or will it be a box ?

the hasanta form seems to be used only at the end of the word (or if a ZWNJ is 
placed after it). Otherwise, if a conjunct is available, that is used, if 
not, the 'half-form' is used. Even if a conjunct is available, the rendering 
software can be instructed to use the half-form instead by placing a ZWNJ 
appropriately. 

khanda-ta should be a halant-form, for example, and not a half-form for ta.

I'm not very clear on what a half-form is supposed to be. It represents the 
consonant + hasanta combination when it is a part of a syllable preceding the 
'base glyph'. In that sense, it can be represented by the consonant + 
hasanta. Alternatively, it can really be a 'half'-form of the character. For 
example, I would have the half-form for pa to be just the initial part of pa 
(without the vertical line). This way, if the font doesn't have the glyph for 
pa+ta (say), it would be rendered as half-form-of-pa + ta (not 
pa_hasanta_ta). This can be really useful for conjuncts starting with letters 
like cha, na, etc, and one can then avoid separate glyphs for many conjuncts.

There is also the possibility of keeping the half forms as just the character 
+ hasanta. But I personally don't think that's a good idea, since that would 
lead to renderings like ikaar_[ta_hasanta]_ta (which I believe is invalid) 
when you ask for ta + hasanta + ZWNJ + ta + ikaar.

The main point here is that the visual entities created by joining half-forms 
(when explicit glyphs for conjuncts are not available) is still treated as a 
conjunct, and e-kaar, i-kaar, etc are placed to its left accordingly. 

> > 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.
>
> How much can ordinary people (people not part of Unicode or MS) influence
> this process ? Can any one submit proposals ?
>
> >  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.

Yes, this is precisely what I was looking for.

Deepayan