Re: ZWNJ/ZWJ being shown in Pango HEAD ?

[Deepayan Sarkar <deepayan stat wisc edu>]

On Wednesday 25 February 2004 12:46 pm, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-02-23 at 11:57 -0800, Stefan Baums wrote:
> > > M$ is trying to implement a system where
> > >
> > > ZWJ+Vowel Signs
> > >
> > > would render the standalone vowel signs only (no dotted circle).
> >
> > Shouldn’t this be possible, as per Unicode Standard, using <space,
> > vowel sign>?  I also think that the dotted circle should not be
> > used in the default rendering of an unattached vowel sign.  The
> > circle is just a typographic convention used in the Unicode book,
> > and explicitly not meant as a general rendering suggestion,
> > current Uniscribe practice notwithstanding.  Looking at
> > preexisting usage for the display of standalone mātrās (as in
> > grammar books), there are no dotted circles anywhere but rather,
> > as you say, just the mātrā, or the mātrā attached to a dash or
> > some such.  The latter _should_ be achievable by the sequence
> > <dash, vowel sign>, but I understand that the Uniscribe makers
> > don’t like cases where a mātrā attaches to anything but a
> > consonant sign, going so far as to call things like <dash, vowel
> > sign> “garbage typing”.  It is not.  Please do not follow
> > Uniscribe in this respect, but be more liberal.
>
> But how do we handle cases like
> dash + Bengali Vowelsign E + Consonant ?
>
> The Bengali Vowelsign E is rendered before the consonant, and so,
>
> dash + Bengali Vowelsign E + Consonant
>
> and
>
> dash + Consonant + Bengali Vowelsign E
>
> will be same visually (last two lines at http://www.peacefulaction.org/
> sayamindu/images/garbage.png).
>
> Somehow, we need to let the users know that method 1 is not the proper
> "consonant ekaar[1]". People using the traditional ugly hack "Bengali
> Software" are accustomed to hitting the key for ekaar before typing in
> the consonant, and we need to be cautious about that.


I think MS feels the same way as you, which is why they have this dotted 
circle thing. My opinion is that checking on things like this is the business 
of a spell-checker (or perhaps the input system used) and not the renderer. 

Something as fundamental and non-configurable as a rendering system should not 
have excessive checks, there should be more than enough rope for the user to 
hang himself twice over.

Deepayan