How to disable Indic syllable form editing in MS word

[Richard Wordingham via Indic]

On Wed, 6 Dec 2017 18:47:36 +0530
हरिराम via Indic <indic at unicode.org> wrote:

> While working in MS word 2007, 2010 or higher
> 
> When one try to Find & replace any particular Unicode Character
> For Example
> to replace all
> 'ा' depended vowel AA
> with
> 'ि' depended vowel i
> 
> it does not works.
> 
> Only full syllable with ' ा' i.e. का, खा, गा, etc. has to be search
> and replaced one by one with many repeats.
> 
> This takes too much time and unnecessary repeats.
> 
> ----
> 2.
> 
> When one try to delete a Indic Character with delete key putting the
> cursor before a syllable, the right side entire syllable is being
> deleted.
> 
> How to delete a particular character instead of entire syllable?
> 
> How to disable the Indic layout feature in MS word?
> 
> Would anybody guide please?

Are you a real Indian?  UTS#29
(https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/tr29-31.html) Section 3 Paragraph
1 strongly suggests that what you are trying to do is not natural.

These particular behaviours you are complaining of annoy me
intensely, but I'm a Westerner and so have no rights in these matters.

Indic layout is not particularly guilty, though it makes editing
clusters difficult.  SIL has a split cursor which attempts to address
the issue, but I've only seen it in their Worldpad text editor.
Another technique, which has been available in emacs (I'm unsure of the
current status), enables one to move the cursor into a cluster Unicode
character by character, and disables shaping across the cluster.  Even
this will have shortcomings when working with two part vowels
canonically equivalent to a single character - one won't know whether
one has one character or two until one steps into the cluster.

Emacs does, by default, provide what I consider the civilised behaviour,
whereby pressing the delete key deletes the next character.  That makes
my life much easier, as I deal with Indic scripts in which it is not at
all unusual to have 3 or more marks attached to a single base character.

Richard.