Sanskrit and Unicode character encoding

[Michael Everson]

I'm reviewing the proposed Unicode 16-bit character encodings
for Tibetan and Sinhalese; both the proposals depart from the
standard ISCII layout which Devanagari, Bangali, Gurmukhi,
Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Burmese
follow (with some reservations re: Tamil). Given the body of
Sanskrit literature written in the Tibetan script and Pali
literature written in the Sinhalese script, it seems to me
that encoding parallel to ISCII is important for both Tibetan
and Sinhalese scripts. Does anyone agree with this opinion?
Parallel encoding can simplify the transfer of a text from
script to script because the positions of the characters
are the same even though the actual code addresses are not.
By keeping Tibetan and Sinhalese out of the fold, script
transfer could be made more troublesome.
 
Has anyone out there expertise on this question? I know,
for instance, that Tibetan TSEG may cause troubles.
 
Michael Everson
School of Architecture, UCD; Richview, Clonskeagh; Dublin 14; E/ire
Phone: +353 1 706-2745  Fax: +353 1 283-8908  Home: +353 1 478-2597