Sanskrit and Unicode character encoding

[Dominik Wujastyk]

In message Fri, 18 Jun 93 19:16:59 BST,
  Michael Everson <EVERSON at IE.UCD.IRLEARN>  writes:

> 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). ...

I think my feelings are similar to Jeroen's.  There are so many fiddly
differences between transcription codings and character sets that any
overlap that may be achievable will almost be more misleading than
helpful.  Moreover, with the existence of free robust and flexible code
conversion tools like translit and patc one can go between codings quite
easily.

But I am handicapped in making a judgement by the fact that I don't know
the degree of success that may be achievable.  I mean if 95% of the
characters can be made to coincide in the character sets for
Hindi/Sanskrit/Pali/Tibetan/Tamil and whatever, then I'm all for it.  And
if it's a straight choice between making an effort in this direction, and
not, then yes, I think it is well worth looking at.

There we are.  I think I've managed to come down firmly on both sides of
the fence.  (Ouch!)

Dominik
--
Dominik Wujastyk           Phone (and voice messages): +44 71 611 8467