On 7 January 2013, Behdad Esfahbod replied to Theppitak Karoonboonyaan: >> - Final NGA (U+1A59) with virama following is not reordered after >> the next base consonant (at the end of line 4).
> Oh, that's new. We need to figure out how to implement that. That > one will be tricky. If it has now been implemented for Tai Tham, please reverse it. It does *not* represent kinzi. The sequence occurs as normal NGA with a subscript consonant in the 'Lanna-Thai Dictionary, Maefahluang Volume' (MFL), e.g. in <U+1A48 TAI THAM LETTER HIGH SA, U+1A26 TAI THAM LETTER NGA, U+1A60 TAI THAM SIGN SAKOT, U+1A25 TAI THAM LETTER LOW KHA> 'sangha'. Indeed, <NGA, SAKOT, WA> can represent a phonetic initial cluster in Northern Thai, and as in Burmese is written with a normal NGA plus a subscript consonant. A separate character exists for 'kinzi', U+1A58 TAI THAM SIGN MAI KANG LAI. It is regularly used for 'sangha' in the Tai Khuen articles in 'ᨡᩮᨾᩁᨭᩛᨶᨣᩬᩁᨩ᩠ᨿᨦᨲᩩᨦ / เขมรัฐนครเชียงตุง / Chieng Tung: Its Way of Life', where the word is written <U+1A48, U+1A58, U+1A25>, with U+1A58 appearing midway between the base consonants. Mai kang lai is written rather differently in Northern Thailand, and it was proposed as separate character, at 1A5A, in the proposal with Unicore reference L2/07007 and ISO reference ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2/N3207R. Unfortunately, the ISO committee copy is no longer on line. I get the impression that in Thailand the symbol is in transition from appearing above the second base consonant to appearing above the first consonant. I have a text book consistently showing it on the first consonant, a text book showing between the two consonants, and a text book consistently showing it on the second consonant except in _tanglai_ 'all', 'many'. The MFL explains that the symbol appears on the second consonant and gives two examples starting <SA, MAI KANG LAI> in which the symbol appears on the following consonant. Neither word appears in the body of the dictionary. The appearance in the MFL is best explained as there being inhibiting factors which prevent it appearing on the second consonant, such as a vowel above or SIGN RA. However, in the body of the dictionary, words starting <SA, MAI KANG LAI> are consistently written with MAI KANG LAI above the SA! A noteworthy example is Northern Thai _tanglai_ <LOW TA, MAI KANG LAI, SIGN LA, AA, SAKOT, YA> 'all', 'many', where MAI KANG LAI almost always starts above the initial consonant. This may be because SIGN LA is part of the same syllable as LOW TA. The textbook showing it between consonants shows it, in this case, between SIGN LA and the vowel AA. Is there a problem with supporting this variety in positioning? Richard. _______________________________________________ HarfBuzz mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/harfbuzz
