On Thu, 2 May 2013 16:49:37 -0400 Ed Trager <[email protected]> wrote:
> I haven't looked at the แม่ฟ้าหลวง dictionary recently, but from what > I recall, I was suspicious that the font, which I've seen used in a > number of books about Tai Tham, had a number of limitations. > In the case of Tai Tham, which has a strong manuscript tradition but > not a long tradition of printed books, at least for regions like > Northern Thailand, perhaps manuscripts provide stronger evidence > (than do typeset books) for what "proper" or "conventional" Tai Tham > orthography is supposed to look like? Yes. I much prefer hand-written sources. It took me a while to work out what was going on with apparent spellings such as <HIGH HA, MEDIAL LA, NGA, SAKOT, WA> for _luang_ (Thai transliteration หลวง). Handwritten text explained it - not only do superscript characters invade the airspace of following base characters, but chains of subscript characters also tunnel under following base characters. One thing I haven't got to grips with is the tendency for superscripts and subscripts to be not so much aimed at base characters but aimed at syllables. Unfortunately, accuracy is then an issue, though it's better than my aim when dotting i's. It's not just manuscripts where there's a problem with internal consistency. The positioning of marks in the MFL is quite erratic, and I'm still not entirely clear where mai sam should be written. Richard. _______________________________________________ HarfBuzz mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/harfbuzz
