Hello, On Tue, 18 Nov 2008, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote: > The u/mrxvt terminals do not display Indic languages correctly. > > The problem is that (say) the word 'inDiyaa' in hindi would be > displayed as 'inDyiaa'.
Expanding on my reading on this topic ... :) The nice article[1] by Marcus Kuhn explains that we need applications (specifically terminals) with "Level 2" support for unicode in order to correctly display Indic languages. [1]: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html There are things like a "combining character" (like vowels in Indic languages) which modify the unicode character that comes before them to give a _different_ unicode character; the resulting unicode character is what must actually be displayed. Such combinations also happen with European languages for words like Mo:bius which is also represented as Möbius. However, in Indic languages such support is far more crticial. Itrans is (AFAIK) a way of representing Indic scripts in ASCII printable characters so that: - the conversion to unicode is unambigous - the resulting Roman text can be read with a modicum of training - the resulting Roman text for identical sounds and words in different languages is often the same - itrans is a commonly available input method for those who use ascii keyboards to enter Indic language text. So if you care for those who read their mail in text consoles, then it is probably better (IMHO) to use Itrans to represent your text until applications with Level 2 support for unicode become commonplace. Regards, Kapil. -- _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe <password> <address>" in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
