[INDOLOGY] Unicode font for ancient and modern Tamil

Thu Mar 16 20:25:24 UTC 2023

Dear Satyanad Kichenassamy,

Indeed, it would be welcome if you could show us examples of what you mean,
as it is not clear to me if you refer to three different things, namely,

- long ra with a vinculum
- short ra with a macron.
- line covering a puḷḷi.

It is also not clear to me what is the difference between "vinculum" and
"macron".

Besides examples of what I call "disambiguating macron" with ciṉṉa ra (to
make clear it is not medial ā),

e.g.
[image: image.png] BnF Indien 220, f94r

and (even though in that case does not seem necessary to disambiguate, at
least for someone knowledgeable in Tamil)
[image: image.png] BnF Indien 220, f93r

it was used with other consonants

e.g.
[image: image.png] BnF Indien 216, f1r

[image: image.png] BnF Indien 220, f93r

[image: image.png] BnF Indien 220, f93r

but so far, I do not remember having met it with periya ṟa.

Christina Muru also sent me examples where the "disambiguating macron" is
used above "e" and "o" to mark them as long "ē" and "ō":

[image: image.png]

With very best wishes

-----------------------------------------

*Emmanuel FRANCIS-GONZE*

Chargé de recherche CNRS

Centre d’études sud-asiatiques et himalayennes

2 Cours des Humanités

93322 AUBERVILLIERS

bureau A222

✆ 01 88 12 01 82

Online CV HAL <https://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/emmanuel-francis>

Le jeu. 16 mars 2023 à 20:15, Jean-Luc Chevillard <
jean-luc.chevillard at univ-paris-diderot.fr> a écrit :

> Dear Satyanad,
>
> as a clarification,
> are you talking about the special forms seen in this image,
> taken from a 17th cent. Goa MS
> in the words which would nowadays be printed as
> ஆரோபிக்கிறது, ஆரோகணம், ஆரோக்கியம், ஆரோசை?
>
> (I obtained those images from Cristina Muru, many years ago)
>
> Best wishes
>
> -- Jean-Luc
>
>
> On 16/03/2023 16:33, Satyanad KICHENASSAMY wrote:
> >
> > Dear Charles,
> >
> > Nice project. Please let us know when the revised font will be
> > available. Regarding the long ra, I assume you are planning to create a
> > glyph for the character with a vinculum? (Or is it already there?)
> > Similarly, the short ra is often written with a macron to avoid
> confusion.
> >
> > One may want to include also the lines that are used to cover a pu.l.li
> > (and thus, restore the vocalization).
> >
> > Best,
> >
> >       Satyanad K.
> >
> > Le 16/03/2023 à 11:42, Charles Li via INDOLOGY a écrit :
> >>
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> At the TST Project, where we're cataloguing Tamil manuscripts, we've
> >> forked Noto Tamil and started adding old ligatures, like pre-reform
> >> ṇā, ṟā, etc. as well as some ligatures that don't seem to have
> >> appeared before in print, such as the below-base "ma" ligatures. See
> >> this page for examples:
> >>
> >>     https://tst-project.github.io/editor/entities.html
> >>
> >> It's still a work in progress!
> >>
> >> Best,
> >>
> >> Charles
> >>
> >> On 2023-03-16 11:08, Satyanad KICHENASSAMY wrote:
> >>> Dear All,
> >>>
> >>> To follow up on Harry Spier's query, the typesetting of the older
> Tamil characters (as well as Tamil Grantha) is sometimes problematic. I use
> Akshar Unicode for contemporary Tamil, which is very close to the standard
> printed characters, but insert some characters from Vaigai for the
> classical characters -- that were actually the standard characters when I
> grew up. For Grantha, the e-Grantamil font is nice even though less close
> to the characters in print, but the ligatures are sometimes undone
> automatically, for reasons that I do not understand. Also, I gather it is
> encoded in the same segment as Bengali, which is another source of
> confusion. The final output can be fine, though, see examples in the
> following paper:
> >>>
> >>> https://www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_2018_num_162_4_96658
> >>>
> >>> This being said, if there is a better solution, I would be interested.
> >>>
> >>> For a diplomatic edition, it would be nice to have fonts that contain
> as many variants as possible. Similarly, Southern Sanskrit manuscripts
> should be reproduced in their original script if possible, especially in
> diplomatic editions. For instance, va and ba in printed Grantha are easier
> to disinguish than in Nagari (this is also true in those palm-leaf mss that
> I have used).
> >>>
> >>> I remember seeing proposals arguing that some characters usually
> encoded in Unicode as ligatures in Indic language fonts should be treated
> as stand-alone glyphs, at least in Tamil. The reason is that you sometimes
> see letters such as "mo" rendered as "kompu-(blank in a dotted
> circle)-lengthening mark-ma" which is of course nonsense. The placement of
> diacritics is also misleading at best, as was pointed out on this list a
> few days ago. This is in addition to the issues raised by Jean-Luc
> Chevillard (for instance, the ர் cannot be written without the lower
> diagonal stroke on some fonts).
> >>>
> >>> Of course, whether one decides to overlook the differences in variants
> of one character always involves judgment. An extreme example would be the
> different versions of the character 之 in the famous calligraphy 蘭亭集序
> Lántíngjí Xù by 王羲之 Wáng Xīzhī. For India, the விநாயகர் சுழி vinaayakar
> cu_li has slightly different forms depending on writers, some of which may
> be worth recording (recall that this symbol is a form of the pra.nava; the
> same issue could be raised about the pra.nava in other scripts).
> >>>
> >>> Best,
> >>>
> >>>        Satyanad Kichenassamy
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, 15 Mar 2023 13:33:42 -0400
> >>> Harry Spier via INDOLOGY<indology at list.indology.info>  wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Received thanks to Victor Davella
> >>>> Harry Spier
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 1:21 PM Harry Spier<vasishtha.spier at gmail.com
> >
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Can someone recommend a good free unicode font for modern Tamil. I.e.
> >>>>> provide a link to download this.
> >>>>> Thanks,
> >>>>> Harry Spier
> >>>>>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
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> >
> > --
> > **********************************************
> > Satyanad KICHENASSAMY
> > Professeur des Universités
> > LMR (CNRS, UMR9008)
> > Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
> > F-51687 Reims Cedex 2
> > France
> > Web:http://phare.normalesup.org/~kichenassamy
> > *********************************************
> >
> >
> >
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