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Tamil Fractions and Symbols – Amendment Proposal Government of Tamilnadu, India __________________________________________________________________________________________ DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Government of Tamil Nadu, India ABSTRACT Tamil Fraction and symbols encoding proposal – Extended feedbacks - Experts from GoTN and user communities involved – Proposal evaluated from the required perspectives – Amendment proposal submitted. 1 Background 1.1 Proposal Reference 1) L2/12-231 - Proposal to encode Tamil fractions and symbols, 17 th July 2012, by Dr.Shriramana Sharma – (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12231-tamil- fractions-symbols-proposal.pdf) 2) L2/12-232 – Letter of Dr.Shriramana Sharma on his proposal 12-231 – (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12232-tamil-fractions-symbols-proposal-aux-doc.pdf) 3) L2/13-028 - Recommendations to UTC on Script Proposals, 25th January 2013, Deborah Anderson, et al – (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13028-script-rept.pdf) 4) L2/13-047 - Revised proposal to encode Tamil fractions and symbols, 5 th March 2013, by Dr.Shriramana Sharma – (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/1304 7- tamil-frac-rev.pdf) 5) SC2/WG2 N4462 – Attestations for Tamil fractions and symbols, 12th June 2013, by Dr.Shriramana Sharma - http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4462.pdf) 6) ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2/WG2 N4623 – Response to the ICTA’s doc L2/14-048 on Tamil fractions and Symbols – 10th September 2014, by Dr.Shriramana Sharma – (http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n4623.pdf ) 7) L2/15-078 - Tamil and Tamil Supplement (proposed) Code Charts, Michel Suignard – (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15078-tamil.pdf) 8) L2/15-079 - Proposed name changes to Tamil Supplement block characters, Roozbeh Pournader, et al – (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15079-tamil-name-chg.pdf) th 9) L2/13051r- Proposal to encode Malayalam minor fractions , 25 April 2013, of Dr.Shriramana Sharma , http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13051r-malayalam-fractions.pdf Page 1 Tamil Fractions and Symbols – Amendment Proposal Government of Tamilnadu, India __________________________________________________________________________________________ 10) L2/14218, Unification of Tamil and Grantha numerals , 11th September 2014, Dr.Shriramana Sharma, http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2014/14218-grantha-tamil-numeral.pdf 1.2 Introduction Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA) of Government of Tamilnadu (GoTN) along with relevant scholars has reviewed these proposals, documents, and has obtained feedbacks from a variety of user communities. It has been very encouraging and satisfying to see a great participation of users from India and abroad on this proposal as it presents a sizeable number of symbols of interest, from old Tamil documents of various categories. While many feedbacks and communications in this regard are present in the document register of the Unicode consortium (UC), TVA and the Department of Information Technology, GoTN and GoI have also received feedbacks. Some of the feedbacks and discussions that came from the users may not be in the UC’s document register but can be found at, http://218.248.16.18/unidoc/index.html, a page of TVA’s portal. Considering the variety of feedbacks and extended observations on the proposal, the Department of Information Technology of GoTN organized an extensive analysis covering the Functional, Language and Technology aspects involved in the proposal. Wherever required the Department of Information Technology of GoTN also consulted the Department of Electronics and Information Technology of GoI. Inline with the communications of - GoTN (L2/15-185, http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15185-tamil-letter.html) and - GoI (L2/15-176, http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15176-goi-tamil-frac.pdf) to UC, the Department of Information Technology, GoTN, had set up a panel consisting of scholars from different Tamil related fields/functions in order to review the proposal and to obtain feedbacks from Functional, Language and Technology perspectives. Annexure-1 has the details of the panel of subject experts. This panel had evaluated the proposal and feedbacks through Functional perspectives viz., Name of the symbols Suitability of the symbols Shape-appropriateness of the symbols Page 2 Tamil Fractions and Symbols – Amendment Proposal Government of Tamilnadu, India __________________________________________________________________________________________ Possible Time variations of the symbols Possible Regional variations of the symbols Possible Handwriting style variations of the symbols Annotations for the symbols Historical evolution of the fractions and symbols etc. From a technical-language perspective, the Unicode committee of TVA, also inspected various transliteration schemes and the issues and feedbacks related to Romanization requirements. Subsequent to several meetings, the subject expert panel and other committees have submitted their decisions and final recommendations. Based on these recommendations, the Department of Information Technology, GoTN, submits this Amendment to the Tamil Fractions and Symbols encoding proposals and documents referred to in section 1.1. 1.3 General observation on the proposal L2/12-231 During the evaluation process, various scholars expressed a few common observations that may be of interest to note before proceeding further. It was through a collective assessment that encoding of such symbols be guided by a combined evidence of printed publications, estampages, photographs, logic in the derivation of the shapes and sometimes even personal vouching by the learned scholar or expert; and it should be as close to reality as possible. In some cases where there are more than one valid symbol for a particular item, the proposals to UC on fractions and symbols seem to have selected one while dropping others. And, there are items that have been incorrectly understood in the proposals to be a symbol or an abbreviation but actually they are neither. Considering the possibilities of more encoding needs in the future, it may be a good idea to have standards for naming the codepoints, and annotations. Page 3 Tamil Fractions and Symbols – Amendment Proposal Government of Tamilnadu, India __________________________________________________________________________________________ 2 Summary of Evaluations and Amendments The evaluations of the subject expert panel has resulted in a number of decisions, recommendations and actions. The various results can be classified as below: Symbols accepted as they are Symbols accepted but their shapes to be changed with minor variations Symbols accepted but their entire shapes have to be changed Symbols accepted but their names have to be changed Symbols accepted but the annotations on them have to be changed Symbols accepted, but adding additional symbols to a particular item Symbols dropped from the encoding proposal Symbols postponed from encoding for now Symbols added that were dropped earlier in L2/13-047, L2/13028 2.1 On the Code Chart L2/15-078 & L2/13-047 Following table summarizes the evaluations and amendments on the 55 symbols as found in the revised proposal L2/13047 and the code chart L2/15078. While the summary addresses the recommendations, the discussions and explanations for the changed or dropped items can be seen in the section-3 of this document. The subject expert panel does not have any comment on the symbols other than the symbols listed in this table. Srl Details as per L2/15078 Recommendations of Cross Code Symbol Name subject expert panel of Ref. Point GoTN (click) 1 th Shape to be altered 3.1.3 11FC2 TAMIL FRACTION 1/80 2 Defer to separate proposal 11FC6 TAMIL FRACTION 3/80th 3.1.4 3 th Shape to be altered 3.1.2 11FC8 TAMIL FRACTION 1/16 4 New Symbol to be added 3.1.2 TAMIL FRACTION 1/16th - 2 5 Shape to be altered 3.1.8 11FCA TAMIL FRACTION 1/8th 6 th Shape to be Changed 3.1.1 11FCC TAMIL FRACTION 3/16 Page 4 Tamil Fractions and Symbols – Amendment Proposal Government of Tamilnadu, India __________________________________________________________________________________________ 7 New Symbol to be added 3.1.7 TAMIL FRACTION ½ - 2 8 Shape to be Changed 3.1.9 11FCD TAMIL FRACTION 1/5th 9 nd Shape to be Changed 3.1.10 11FC5 TAMIL FRACTION 1/32 10 th Defer to separate proposal 3.1.11 11FC7 TAMIL FRACTION 3/64 11 11FD1 Shape to be changed 3.2.1 TAMIL SIGN NEL 12 Name to be changed 3.2.2 11FD2 TAMIL SIGN SUVADU 13 Defer to separate proposal 3.2.5 11FD6 TAMIL SIGN PADAKKU 14 No encoding required 3.6.2 11FD4 TAMIL SIGN URI 15 Shape to be altered 3.2.6 11FD5 TAMIL SIGN MUUVUZHAKKU 16 No encoding required 3.6.3 11FD8 TAMIL SIGN PAISAA 17 No encoding required 3.6.4 11FD9 TAMIL SIGN ANAA 18 Shape to be changed 3.3.1 11FDB TAMIL SIGN PANAM 19 Shape to be changed 3.3.2 11FDC TAMIL SIGN PON 20 Shape to be changed 3.3.3 11FDD TAMIL SIGN VARAAGAN 21 Defer to separate proposal 3.6.5 11FDF TAMIL SIGN GEJAM 22 Shape to be altered 3.4.1 11FE3 TAMIL DRY CULTIVATION SIGN 23 Shape to be changed 3.4.2 11FE4 TAMIL LAND SIGN 24 Shape to be changed 3.5.1 11FE7 TAMIL FIRST SIGN 25 No encoding required 3.6.6 11FEA TAMIL SIGN CIRANJIIVI 26 No encoding required 3.6.7 11FEB TAMIL SIGN PILLAI 27 No encoding required 3.6.8 11FEC TAMIL SIGN RAAJA 28 No encoding required 3.6.9 11FED TAMIL ABBREVIATION KKU 29 No encoding required 3.6.9 11FEE TAMIL ABBREVIATION YUM 30 No encoding required 3.6.9 11FEF TAMIL ABBREVIATION VUM Page 5 Tamil Fractions and Symbols – Amendment Proposal Government of Tamilnadu, India __________________________________________________________________________________________ 2.2 On the Reccommendations to UTC L2/13-028 & L2/12-231 The document “Recommendation to UTC” L2/13028 (Item 17) disagreed on 7 symbols proposed through L2/12231 due to a few reasons. Symbols for fractions 1/20th and 1/4th were considered to be same as alphabetic letters ப and வ respectively.