Doug Ewell asked: >>"SS" <sisrivas at blueyonder dot co dot uk> wrote:
>> To the point, There are usage samples, there were/are >> publications/magazines even run by the then leader of the current >> chief minister of Tamil Nadu state. >> >> There are usage samples. Widespread!, this will be done eventually as >> with other rollbacks of the past, in a controlled manner. >Is this something that is proposed for the future, or it something that > has already been adopted now or is scheduled for adoption by a >siginificant proportion of Tamil speakers? Can I find out about it in >newspapers or periodicals, or Internet locations, other than those >controlled by the group(s) promoting the reform? >Note that the question is not "Is this a desirable reform?" nor "Will >this reform make the Tamil language easier to read and write?" Doug, There was a political leader called Periyar EVR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy EVR trained politicians defeated Congress party in 1967 elections in Tamil Nadu and ever since, Dravidian movement parties (spun from EVR's original party) has ruled the Indian state until now. EVR was never interested in elections, but only concentrated on social movements. For 75 years, EVR's party magazines use vocalised consonants with u, uu matras unligated at least in some pages in every issue of their daily newspaper, Viduthalai & books they print. Recently they asked for the ways how to do this & who will do the fonts. Note that there are political parties in Tamil Nadu who want to give that option also for the readers in their magazines, official websites. Let me give an example. A 1982 issue of a magazine, called Pulavar. The editor is Secretary, Grand Council of Tamil Teachers, India. A 12.5 Mb file: http://www.naalorunool.com/ebooks/15/1472/TM1472.pdf (From Pollachi Nasan's library & thanks to P. Nasan for sending the link). There are many, many examples like this in Tamil script in the last 75 years and also in contemporary use. We will compile and upload in a website. As Universal Character set encoding, this minority tradition also needs to get into the Unicode Standard. Note the parallel in Malayalam, a close script to Tamil. Since both options co-exist often in the same page in magazines for ligate and non-ligate u, uu matra consonants, it's better to allow this option in fonts with ZWNJ joiner of u & uu matras in Tamil script for the user community. There is a major Classical Tamil conference happening in Coimbatore between June 23 - 27. Some from Unicode Tech Committee are attending as well. So, will work on all this with experts and officials some time in the future. (a) Tamil grammar defines from 12th century, all the syllables with matra signs as Dependent letters "cArbezuttu", much like what Unicode does. You can compare Unicode characters with Tamil word, ezuttu in Tamil grammar and sequences as cArbezuttu. To teach to students, the dependent nature of all the uyirmey with matra signs, allowing this in the Standard and fonts (from Microsoft, Apple, ...) will be useful. (b) In English, we have both Capital and Small letters derived from monumental and minuscule traditions. As the two orthographic variants, explained above, for Tamil u, uu matra consonants are allowed in Unicode, it will be useful to mix these two styles and will be useful in calligraphy and rich text publishing. It will break the monotony, for example, the headings can be in ligate forms but body of a text can be in unligate forms of u, uu matras. N. Ganesan
