[Debian-in-workers] Re: Fwd: debian-in-workers@lists.alioth.debian.org; pravi.a@gmail.com; anivar@hackemail.com; vimaljoseph@gmail.com

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Christian Perrier said on Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 10:55:44AM +0100,:

 > You already explained me the difference between a "traditional" and 
 > "simplified" way to write Malayalam. What I understand is that local 
 > authorities have supported the simplified orthography (I guess with the 
 > intent to improve literacy...something that was done in China in the 
 > communist years). Am I right?
 > 
 > Is that what is called "Old Lipi"/""New Lipi"?

Lipi means `script'. 

 >  Even  though  I perfectly  understand  that  wanting  to keep  the
 > traditional  writing  style  alive  is a  perfectly  valid  opinion
 > (preserve  cultural   heritage,  etc.),  I  have   the  concern  of
 > pragmatism  when  dealing  with  FLOSS  localisation:  I  want  our
 > localisation  work to be  *used*. So,  do you  confirm me  that the
 > choice of the "traditional" orthography will not make the Malayalam
 > translation an "elite" translation?

Well, this (old/new  orthography) is not going to  make any difference
here. UTF8 encoding allows the  user/viewer to choose the encoding she
prefers. Simply use a font which  has old orthography, and you get old
script; and  use a font  which has `new  orthography' and you  get the
same text renered in new script.

BTW,  AFAICT, script  reform in  Malayalam is  different  from Chinese
script  reform, in  that Malayalam  script reform  simply  reduced the
number glyphs in use. (may be wrong about Chinese script here)

Now, the onus  of rendering has been shifted  to the rendering engines
(like pango) and the OpenType font technology do the job.

>From  the screen  shots published,  I find  that the  zwj  (Zero Width
Joiner)   is  visible   as   a  fine   vertical   line  near   certain
characters. (at  the same point where  the Old font  rendered a square
box). This is something to be avoided.

-- 
>From The Devil's Dictionary (1881-1906) [devil]:
  LAWYER, n.  One skilled in circumvention of the law.