[Harfbuzz-indic] Unicode vs OpenType: nukta after vowel

[Chapman, Christopher]

Christopher Chapman wrote:
> The examples I cited were of a below-base dot that modifies matra
> (dependent vowels).  Again, see page 15 of:
> https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/noonan/www/Recent%20Adaptions%20of%20the%20Devanagari%20Script%20for%20the.pdf

Shriramana Sharma replied:
>Thank you for this most interesting link. And IMHO it is clear that such 
>text should use COMBINING DOT BELOW. Such (vowel) modifiers are common 
>in IPA too -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA#Diacritics and they are 
>all represented by COMBINING characters.

Perhaps it should, but I gather from the post I quote below by Peter Constable of Microsoft that this sort of usage is the reason that "The OpenType BNF allows applying Nukta to matras too" (as Behdad observed in the email to which I replied).

----
Posted by: pgcon
         
Manitoshi wrote:
 
"All this complain is just to make sure we don't move forward into a more wrong path, as now we have maatra with nukta next god knows what else... "
 
Please note that the Devanagari script is used to write more languages than just Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi and the handful of others people might typically be familiar with. Specifically, it is used in Nepal to write some languages that belong to the Tibeto-Burman language family, languages that have significantly different phonological systems than Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit and Hindi. Nukta is applied to vowel signs in the orthographies of some of those languages to indicate additional vocalizations that occur in those languages.
 
 
Peter
----
source: http://forum.fontlab.com/archive-old-microsoft-volt-group/devanagari-new-features-t6717.0.html


Cheers,
Christopher