Counting Devanagari Aksharas

Richard Wordingham via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Wed Apr 19 18:35:39 CDT 2017


Is there consensus on how to count aksharas in the Devanagari script?
The doubts I have relate to a visible halant in orthographic syllables
other than the first.

For example, according to 'Devanagari VIP Team Issues Report'
http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2011/11370-devanagari-vip-issues.pdf, a
derived form from Nepali श्रीमान्  should be written श्रीमान्‌को
<U+0936 DEVANAGARI LETTER SHA, U+094D DEVANAGARI SIGN VIRAMA, U+0930
DEVANAGARI LETTER RA, U+0940 DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN II, U+092E
DEVANAGARI LETTER MA, U+093E DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN AA, U+0928
DEVANAGARI LETTER NA, U+094D, U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER, U+0915
DEVANAGARI LETTER KA, U+094B DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN O> and not
श्रीमान्को  <U+0936, U+094D, U+0930, U+0940, U+092E, U+093E, U+0928,
U+094D, U+0915, U+094B>.  Now, if the font used has a conjunct for
SHRA, I would count the former as having 4 aksharas SH.RII, MAA, N, KO
and the latter as having 3 aksharas SH.RII, MAA, N.KO.

If the font leads to the use of a visible halant instead of the vattu
conjunct SH.RA, as happens when I view this email, would there then be
5 and 4 aksharas respectively?  A further complication is that the font
chosen treats what looks like SH, RA as a conjunct; the vowel I appears
to the left of SH when added after RA (श्रि).

Richard.



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