[smc-discuss] ചില്ലക്ഷരങ്ങളുടെ രാഷ്ട്രീയം

[Jayadevan Raja]

Thanks, Praveen. The whole issue is clear now.

But since this affects almost all Indic and Parso-Arabic scripts, what are
the stands of the governments, especially India's Central Government? Indian
Government is a member, right? Anyway, it is strange that the Full Members
are all big US-based companies, except for one German company.

2011/1/19 Praveen A <pravi.a at gmail.com>

> 2011, ജനുവരി 19 12:09 രാവിലെ നു, Jayadevan Raja <jayadevanraja at gmail.com>
> എഴുതി:
> > So Santhosh, the definition of (consonant + virama + ZWJ) <=> (Atomic
> > Chillu) does not exist in the current Unicode standard, leading to the
> > confusions, right? That is, is it correct to say that "the crux of the
> whole
> > confusion lies in the absence of some essential equivalence definitions
> in
> > the standard"?
>
> We argued strongly for consider equivalance when unicode was
> considering atomic chillus. But it was not accepted.
>
> I don't think those who argued for atomic code points would agree to
> equivalance, because the whole argument for atomic chillus was built
> on the logic that, we should not need ZWJ, because they have zero
> collition weight and clueless programmers (like those who work in
> google) or poor/resource constrained companies might decide to strip
> them, even though it is clearly defined where this can and cannot be
> stripped. For example you cannot strip those in identifiers as per
> “Unicode Identifier and Pattern Syntax”(TR31). See
> http://thottingal.in/blog/2011/01/08/identifiers-in-indic-languages/
> for more on this. So for clueless programmers and poor companies
> ignoring standards, we decided to break the entire language, how
> logical, right? If you understand who Unicode consortium works for, it
> is not a surprice at all. If you have to choose between language and a
> member company - it is clearly the member company that takes
> precedence.
>
> Exact quote:
> "Those exceptions and character properties like 'default-ignorable'
> are there for a reason. It is there to choose between a coarse or fine
> tuned implementation based on the resources the implementor has. It is
> a great thing for the language that, the script can remain intact in a
> coarse implementaiton as well. For Malayalam, that will be more or
> less true after chillu encoding. So it will be better supported in
> resource constrained platforms or implementations." Cibu CJ, 2008,
> ഫെബ്രുവരി 3 11:40 രാവിലെ on Indic mailing list.
>
> There was even suggestion that having this confusion would generate
> programming jobs! Height of insanity!
>
> James Kass responded to my question: It clarifies there no way atomic
> chillu supporters would accept the equivalance, because that means
> joiners are legitimate again, which means atomic chillus was not
> required in the first place.
>
> "    4. But if you can't forbid the existing sequences what use is the
> newly
>    added atomic chillus going to serve?
>
>
> A.  It adds variant spellings, which is not always a good thing.
> B.  It offers employment opportunities for people involved in
>   file/character conversion.
> C.  It offers more employment opportunities for anyone working
>   in text processing, search engine technology, text display, and
>   so forth because everything will need to be upgraded to support
>   the new variant spellings."
>
> See my blog post on the whole atomic chillu debate
> http://www.j4v4m4n.in/2009/11/07/unicode-or-malayalam/
>
> IDN and their decision to strip joiners were used as strogest
> arguments for atomic chillus. വന്യവനിക/വന്‍യവനിക kind of examples
> where the two words are only separated by a joiners. First, those
> examples used were made up, second it was based on a wrong decision by
> ICANN for IDN standard. Instead of correcting ICANN and demanding
> acceptance for joiners in IDN, we decided to go for a 'low level work
> around'.  If unicode consortium says you can continue to use ZWJ for
> chillus, then the whole argument for atomic chillus falls like a deck
> of cards - why was this introduced in the first place?
>
> > Once Unicode defines this equivalence, the problems will be solved in
> > everywhere like Gnome (you have already resolved the issue), QT (as Sebin
> > said), Macintosh, Windows, International Components for Unicode,
> etcetera,
> > right?
>
> But the whole problem is Unicode's priorities lie somewhere else. You
> can try and hit your head against the wall, we all did it. But if you
> believe some benevalent, kind-hearted, concerned souls at unicode
> would accept cononical equivalance if only we were to prove it is
> required, try talking to them.
>
> Praveen
> --
> പ്രവീണ്‍ അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്‍
> You have to keep reminding your government that you don't get your
> rights from them; you give them permission to rule, only so long as
> they follow the rules: laws and constitution.
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>


-- 
Thanking You,
Jayadevan V
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