Solution for Extended Tamil

[Richard Wordingham]

On Wed, 24 Jan 2024 20:23:42 +0000
James Kass via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org> wrote:

> If the users considered that placing the superscript at the end of
> the syllable was incorrect and a temporary work-around, we'd expect
> to see this reflected in disclaimers on the various web pages.  If
> the specialists in the user community considered syllable-final
> superscript digits to be wrong and could have made an OpenType
> solution, we'd expect to see notices on the web pages offering a
> downloadable font for 'correct' display.  Are there any such notices
> or disclaimers?

That's probably a question for those who read Tamil - there may be
little point in putting up such notices in English.

Additionally, I’m not sure that a font that works on Internet Explorer
was possible.  I’m not even sure that an OpenType font can be made for
Chromium or Firefox.  Can one even kern Tamil syllables and superscript
digits using OpenType?

> Regarding non-Unicode or PUA solutions, TSCII does not support 
> superscript digits.  As for TACE16, got both the TAU-Barathi and 
> TAC-Barathi Regular fonts from this web page:
> https://www.tamilvu.org/ta/tkbd-index-341488
> ... there are no superscript digits in these fonts.  (TACE16 maps 
> precomposed Tamil syllables to the PUA.  Since TACE16 is visual
> order, if its developers wanted to support Extended Tamil, they
> could.  Maybe there are other TACE16 fonts which support superscript
> digits.)
> 

TACE16 gets its speed advantages by having only 24 characters and then
being as simple as proportionally-spaced ASCII.  For one extension in
the same style, one would have to add 14 consonants (or 15 if it
supports Vedic Sanskrit) and about another consonant’s worth of
oddments – spacing anusvara, anunasika, syllabic consonants, visarga,
nasalised dead consonants, and perhaps more.

I suspect its developers mostly loathe ‘Extended Tamil’.  And you’ve
already noticed that those TACE16 fonts lack superscript digits. ACE16
gets its speed advantages by having only 24 characters and then being
as simple as proportionally-spaced ASCII.  For one extension in the
same style, one would have to add 14 consonants (or 15 if it supports
Vedic Sanskrit) and about another consonant’s worth of oddments –
spacing anusvara, anunasika, syllabic consonants, visarga, nasalised
dead consonants, and perhaps more.

Richard.