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

[Chapman, Christopher]

Bernard Massot wrote:
>I personally agree with Unicode. I've never seen a nukta following a
>vowel, and linguistics books I've read on Indian scripts don't speak of
>that. Can you think of any real world use of such a thing?

Yes, sort of.  :-)

Take a look at the paper, "Recent Adaptions of the Devanagari Script for the Tibeto-Burman Languages of Nepal" by Michael Noonan, available here:
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/noonan/www/Recent%20Adaptions%20of%20the%20Devanagari%20Script%20for%20the.pdf

On page 15 there's an example of a "subscript dot" (which is thus arguably a nukta [remember that "nukta" just means "point" or "dot"]) being used to modify the vowel signs for use in the Limbu language. The dot appears below the consonant "ka" in the example although in a different position from where it would typically go when changing "ka" to "qa" in Hindi.  Perhaps this could be represented in Unicode as a U+0323 COMBINING DOT BELOW rather than a U+093C DEVANAGARI SIGN NUKTA, but I mention it because it is a NUKTA-like below-base dot that is modifying the vowel sign, not the consonant.

Also possibly of interest: on page 16 there's an example of the halant being used below a vowel sign for use in the Thangmi languages.

Cheers,
Christopher