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

[Kaushik Ghose]

> 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
?

> 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 ?

> 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, I found a few examples in the samsad eng->beng dictionary
pronounciation part eg. for syrup

-kg