[Freebangfont-devel] How to assign KhondoT - Just go ahead do do it??

[Robin Upton]

Dear All,

 

What's this I see from VishwaBharat @tdil (http://tdil.mit.gov.in)? Issue #6 of their magazine has lots of interesting data about Bangla language including letter frequency data and some stuff about Unicode. Most interesting of all, on the end of the now familiar list of Bangla codepoints, there is a section marked 'Bengali-specific additions' with not only the familiar code points, but which concludes with the following entries:

09FB        BENGALI SIGN YA PHALLA

09FC        BENGALI SIGN KHANDA TA

09FD        BENGALI LETTER KHYA

There's a note underneath that says about 09FD (Used in Assamese). How interesting.

 

I've just checked on www.unicode.org and this doesn't seem to be in Unicode v.3. There is no indication in VishwaBharat that these three signs are 'under consideration', have special status or are otherwise different from the other Bangla signs which appear in Unicode v.3.0.

 

I'm no expert on Khanda-Ta, but have been following the discussion passively.The need for a separate sign seems to be very well proven, for example by Andy White at http://www.exnet.btinternet.co.uk. Making Ya Phalla a separate character, although completely against the notion of Unicode OTF would solve the problem of .  But I'm not seeking to rehash any discussion of the merits of these solutions, I just thought that the 'allocation' (by whom, I'm unsure...) of codepoints 09F{B-D} deserved a wider audience.

 

Robin Upton

Altruists International
www.altruists.org