http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18181-n4947-assamese.pdf
This is a fascinating proposal to disunify the Assamese script from Bengali on the following bases: 1. The identity of Assamese as a script distinct from Bengali is in jeopardy. 2. Collation is different between the Assamese and Bengali languages, and code point order should reflect collation order. 3. Keyboard design is more difficult because consonants like ক্ষ are encoded as conjunct forms instead of atomic characters. 4. The use of a single encoded script to write two languages forces users to use language identifiers to identify the language. 5. Transliteration of Assamese into a different script is problematic because letters have different phonological value in Assamese and Bengali. It will be interesting to see where this proposal goes. Given that all or most of these issues can be claimed for English, French, German, Spanish, and hundreds of other languages written in the Latin script, if the Assamese proposal is approved we can expect similar disunification of the Latin script into language-specific alphabets in the future. -- Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org