Re: Old Orthography

[Bala Pillai <bala@apic.net>]

Kalyan,

At 10:10 AM 9/18/97 +0000, Dr.K. Kalyanasundaram wrote:

>I am very much confused still with the object of this exercise
>-whether we are going for glyph encoding or character encoding.
>I am not an expert on Unicode either. So I do not have a quick
>answer to your comments/querries. I have to think camly over
>the weekend.

Fair enough :-) BTW, by no means am I an expert either!

>
>>a) systemic consistency suggest that the old Tamil numeral glyphs 
>>    be deal with  as an alternative glyph display of 1,2,3 etc?
>>b) UNICODE rules be violated (even though they are partly on 
>>    UNICODE 2.0   perhaps through some "they appear on Mauritius
>>   currency notes" [so what?] misunderstanding
>
>To me there is only one numeral set in the 8-bit scheme to
>do arithmatic and these are the standard 1,2,3 etc occupying
>the slots 48-57 in the lower ASCII block. If my little 
>understanding of computers is correct,  mathematical 
>operations in all applications, by default are associated
>only with these glyphs 48-57 and not with anything else.
>(Please, I stand to be corrected on this, i am wrong).
>Simply because I choose to call a glyph that looks like ka as 
>tamil numeral 1, I cannot use it as 1 in any arithmatics.

You have a good point here.

>
>My view of the usage of the tamil numerals in the same as that
>of unicode having these glyphs in their tamil segment/block.
>I do not think unicode is suggesting that these tamil numerals
>can be invoked in a routine alternative glyph display so that you
>can do arithmatic with them in an all tamil scenario. 
>(  I have to check it out. May be some unicode experts can
>fill it in. ).  

I have a feeling you are right but will say no more and leave it to the
UNICODE experts - Kok Yong? Muthu?

cheers../bala



bala pillai* bala@sydney.net*the asia pacific internet co, sydney
V I R T U A L   C O M M U N I T Y   E X P E R T S
<http://apic.net>   <http://sydney2000.net> <http://malaysia.net>
<http://tamil.net>      for info send blank <mailto:info@apic.net>
ph:+61 2 9419 5333		           fax: + 61 2 9419 5155