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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Re[2]: Tibetan input
From:       Éric Bischoff <e.bischoff () noos ! fr>
Date:       2002-06-19 7:37:23
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On Wednesday 19 June 2002 08:53, Grisha Mokhin wrote:
> Hello Juraj,
>
> JB> we've been consulting these things with Eric Bischoff. Our best
> JB> bet is to try to summarize, what Tibetan characters are NOT in
> JB> Unicode and try to file a proposal to add them there. Unicode
> JB> standard is constantly improving and there should be no problem
> JB> with this.
>
> JB>  Would you like to help this?
> Yes, definitely. Actually, from lgm.ttf font I can see for sure that
> 255 symbols are quite enough for all Tibetan input, including
> punctuation and complex Sanskrit stacks for mantras, that are very
> common in Tibetan texts. However, most of Tibetan letters are combined
> from top to bottom, and sometimes there are four symbols combined to
> give a single Tibetan letter, like HUM.

Ah? But from what I see, current Unicode recognized combinations of Tibetan 
signs. Tsa-phru sign for example can combine on top right side of any letter. 
Of course, I don't know if this is enough for all the combinations you need.

Have a look at
	http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0F00.pdf
I think it is better to use that as a reference than looking into a Windows 
font that might be broken.

> The existing Tibetan Unicode page was not designed with this feature
> in mind, so it is not applicable for real life, and we should modify
> it or have another codepage assigned.

Unicode never modifies anything - they just keep on adding.

I also find it a bit strange that the current encoding is not "applicable for 
real life". Usually, they have good specialists at the Unicode consortium. Of 
course, I don't speak Tibetan, so I'm not able to judge myself.

> We can even try to make an 8 bit codepage for Tibetan, because with
> smart design all basic Tibetan characters can be fit into 128 symbols.

There are thousands code positions available in unicode. You are not bound by 
eight bits. Also, there is no such thing as a "codepage" in unicode - all the 
characters on Earth are just in one huge codepage.

> There are 30 letters in Tibetan alphabet. But they are modified in
> their graphic representation depending on their position in a
> syllable. They are combined from left to right and from top to bottom.
> The standard way to type Tibetan is to use Wylie transliteration,
> where Tibetan letters are represented by English transliterated form.
>
> When I type, for example, a Tibetan syllable "tshan", first I type "t"
> and Tibetan "t" is displayed on the screen. Then I type "s", and it
> means I have to delete "t" (by sending a backspace simulated
> keystroke) and display Tibetan "ts". Same with "tsh" - "ts" should be
> deleted and replaced by "tsh". Then I type "a" and nothing happens,
> because "a" has no graphical representation in "tshan" glyph, and at
> the end - "n", and Tibetan "n" is added to "tsh", forming the final
> syllable.

There are such "input methods" for Chinese (both traditional and simplified) 
in Linux, so I would not be surprised that there is one for Tibetan too.

-- 
Éric Bischoff
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