Draft transliteration scheme on the Web

[Anthony P Stone]

On June 13, 1998, S Palaniappan wrote:

>My preference would be to stick with the transliteration scheme of the 
>Tamil Lexicon (which uses l_macr-b) for the following reasons.
>
> . . .
>
>2. Having two sub dots with r may lead to confusion between this letter 
>and the r_macr-b used in Tamil and Malayalam. In many books printed 
>in India when the printing is not very good the two dots merge into a 
>macron. I have encountered this many times.

This is an important point.   And confusion is possible in any country when
small type is used.

>3. Using "z" seems to be very arbitrary.
>
>So, my vote is for l_macr-b.

A problem with this is that macr-b is otherwise used only for alveolar
consonants, and is useful as an indicator for them. 

Tony Stone

Dr Anthony P. Stone, Project Leader, ISO/TC46/SC2/WG12 Transliteration of
Indic scripts.  
Email: stone_catend at compuserve.com             Thinking aloud on
transliteration:
  
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stone_catend/translit.htmerve.com/
homepages/stone_catend/translit.htm