[HarfBuzz] New Indic standard?

[Rajeev J Sebastian]

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 7:30 AM, Harshula<harshula at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-08-21 at 12:26 -0400, Ed Trager wrote:
>
>> (4) It would also be nice to eventually include in the test data cases
>> covering the issues mentioned by Peter Constable in the Unicode Public
>> Review Issues #37 "Proposal on Clarification and Consolidation of the
>> Function
>> of ZERO WIDTH JOINER in Indic Scripts".  Does anyone know if
>> Constable's proposal is now accepted as part of the standard?
>
> http://www.unicode.org/review/resolved-pri.html
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> 37 Clarification of the Use of Zero Width Joiner in Indic Scripts
> 2004.08.03 There are some inconsistencies in the use of ZERO WIDTH
> JOINER (ZWJ) in a number of Indic scripts which are outlined in the
> accompanying review document. This proposal intends to rectify these
> problems, clarifying how the ZERO WIDTH JOINER is to be applied in
> scripts, and consolidating common mechanisms for equivalent problems
> that exist in several scripts. The scope for what is proposed covers
> Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada
> and Malayalam. The question for reviewers is: Should the UTC adopt a
> model in which ZWJ precedes Virama, as proposed in section 7 of the
> review document?
>
> Resolution: Closed 2004-08-24. UTC accepted the proposal and will create
> an Indic conjoining behavior model.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------

Peter's model for handling ZWJ/ZWNJ is probably one of the better
proposals out there. However, many things that have happened since
then have negated pieces of his proposal. Even though UC has accepted
the proposal, there are still many unknowns, atleast with respect to
Malayalam.

Regards
Rajeev J Sebastian