[kde-russian] Re[2]: Tibetan input

[Grisha Mokhin <mokhin@bog.msu.ru>]

Hello Juraj,

JB> we've been consulting these things with Eric Bischoff. Our best
JB> bet is to try to summarize, what Tibetan characters are NOT in
JB> Unicode and try to file a proposal to add them there. Unicode
JB> standard is constantly improving and there should be no problem
JB> with this.

JB>  Would you like to help this?
Yes, definitely. Actually, from lgm.ttf font I can see for sure that
255 symbols are quite enough for all Tibetan input, including
punctuation and complex Sanskrit stacks for mantras, that are very
common in Tibetan texts. However, most of Tibetan letters are combined
from top to bottom, and sometimes there are four symbols combined to
give a single Tibetan letter, like HUM.

The existing Tibetan Unicode page was not designed with this feature
in mind, so it is not applicable for real life, and we should modify
it or have another codepage assigned.

We can even try to make an 8 bit codepage for Tibetan, because with
smart design all basic Tibetan characters can be fit into 128 symbols.

JB> Second thing: as I don't have Windows license, I can't try your
JB> program. Could you please explain how are the characters entered
JB> from keyboard? I believe the Tibetan alphabet is not caligraphical
JB> (like chineese), so there should be only few letter (35?). So each
JB> character is typed with single keystroke or do you need some
JB> combinations?
There are 30 letters in Tibetan alphabet. But they are modified in
their graphic representation depending on their position in a
syllable. They are combined from left to right and from top to bottom.
The standard way to type Tibetan is to use Wylie transliteration,
where Tibetan letters are represented by English transliterated form.

When I type, for example, a Tibetan syllable "tshan", first I type "t"
and Tibetan "t" is displayed on the screen. Then I type "s", and it
means I have to delete "t" (by sending a backspace simulated
keystroke) and display Tibetan "ts". Same with "tsh" - "ts" should be
deleted and replaced by "tsh". Then I type "a" and nothing happens,
because "a" has no graphical representation in "tshan" glyph, and at
the end - "n", and Tibetan "n" is added to "tsh", forming the final
syllable.

Best wishes,
 Grisha