On 15/5/14 01:19, Martin Hosken wrote:
Dear Behdad,
The previous grammar for medial group was allowing an Asat after
the medial group only if there was a medial Wa or Ha, but not if
there was only a medial Ya. This doesn't make sense to me and
sounds reversed, as both medial Wa and Ha are below marks while
Asat is an above mark. An Asat can come before the medial group
already (in fact, multiple ones can. Why?!). The medial Ya
however is a spacing mark and according to Roozbeh it's valid to
want an Asat on the medial Ya instead of the base, so it looks to
me like we want to allow an Asat after the medial group if there
*was* a Ya but not if there wasn't any. Not wanting to produce
dotted-circle where Windows is not, this commit changes the grammar
to allow one Asat after the medial group no matter what comes in
the group.
Might be worth reading UTN#11 on this. If Roozbeh has documentary
evidence of languages where the asat really does go over the
medial-ya rather than the consonant, then I would love to see it. The
reasoning behind having the asat before the medial is because asat
marks reduplication in that context in Burmese. It makes no sense to
have an asat on a medial since people don't want to kill a sequence.
Try saying a word final kw, you might be able to wrap your tongue
around it, but it doesn't fit any languages around here.
But regardless of whether it "makes sense" for any known orthography,
ISTM that provided the medial is a spacing glyph, there's a clear visual
distinction between <base><asat><medial> and <base><medial><asat>. So
allowing both does not introduce a problematic spelling ambiguity, and
it leaves users of the script free to produce whichever of the two
written forms they wish.
Recalling that Unicode encodes (and OpenType renders) the graphical
elements that make up scripts, and not the linguistic content of
particular languages, I think it's correct, in general, for the grammar
to allow a sequence like this.
JK
The aim of UTN#11 is to come up with a consistent ordering of
diacritics that balances the need for consistency with
appropriateness of spelling. For the most part it's OK, if a little
complex. But that was because of pressure to put linguistic purity
over technical expediency.
IOW, I think the change you have made is probably a wrong move :)
Yours, Martin _______________________________________________
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