Indic Devanagari Query

[Aditya Gokhale]

Hello Everybody,     I had few query regarding representation of Devanagari script in Unicode (Code page - 0x0900 - 0x097F). Devanagari is a writing script, is used in Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit languages. I have following questions -   1. In Marathi and Sanskrit language two characters glyphs of 'la' and 'sha' are represented differently as shown in the image below -    (First glyph is 'la' and second one is 'sha') as compared to Hindi where these character glyphs are represented as shown in the image below -   (First glyph is 'la' and second one is 'sha')   In the same script code page, how do I use these two different Glyphs, to represent the same character ? Is there any way by which I can do it in an Open type font and Free type font implementation ?   2. Implementation Query -      In an implementation where I need to send / process Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit data, how do I differentiate between languages (Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit). Say for example, I am writing a translation engine, and I want to translate a document having Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit Text in it, how do I know from the code points between 0x0900 and 0x097F, that the data under perusal is Hindi / Marathi / Sanskrit ?     I would suggest that we should give different code pages for Marathi, Hindi and Sanskrit. May be current code page of Devanagari can be traded as Hindi and two new code pages for Marathi and Sanskrit be added. This could solve these issues. If there is any better way of solving this, any one suggest.     3. Character codes for jna, shra, ksh -   In Sanskrit and Marathi jna, shra and ksh are considered as separate characters and not ligatures. How do we take care of this ? Can I get over all views on the matter from the group ? In my opinion they should be given different code points in the specific language code page. Please find below the character glyphs -   jna shra ksh   thanks, Aditya Gokhale. GIST Research and Development Lab, C-DAC Pune, Maharashtra, India.   http://www.cdacindia.com/html/gist/gistidx.asp