Burmese Rendering (dots and circles)

[Richard Wordingham]

On Thu, 1 Sep 2022 04:51:05 +0000
James Kass via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org> wrote:

> In a subsequent Myanmar proposal, N3143, the glyph for U+103D (Medial 
> Wa) is shown as a circle, picture attached.  In the current code
> charts, Medial Wa is teardrop shaped.
> 
> So : ္ + ဝ ≠  ွ
> 
> Since the new character was a disunification rather than a
> replacement, a Myanmar font should support both the sequence and the
> Medial Wa character.  And the Medial Wa character should display as a
> teardrop shape rather than a circle.  And the virama sequence glyph
> should display as a circle, which is simply a reduced letter Wa.  Is
> this correct?

No.  According to the descriptions, <MEDIAL WA> is *optionally* somewhat
triangular, but <VIRAMA, WA> is mandatorily round.  There is no
obligation to distinguish them glyphically. (I have done no
research to verify this - I am dependent on the information
reported to the Unicode Consortium.)  How triangular the MEDIAL WA
glyph is varies - the Sixth Council text at
https://www.pali-text-images.net/cst/02-suttantapitaka/06-dighanikaya-1-cst.pdf
has a very triangular subscript WA.

> As Richard has pointed out, the Padauk font does not support the 
> Virama+Wa sequence.

This is consistent with technical note UTN-11 Version 4, which gives
the encoding for Sanskrit <ktv> as <U+1000 MYANMAR LETTER KA, U+1039
MYANMAR SIGN VIRAMA, U+1010 MYANMAR LETTER TA, U+103D MEDIAL WA>.

Richard.