Re: [aspell-devel] [aspell #336454] Aspell Malayalam

[Santhosh Thottingal]

On 7/2/07, Kevin Atkinson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi.  I do not fully understand the issue as I do know very little about
> Malayalam.  Can you please explain it to to me or give me a link that does.
Dear Kevin,
I will explain the problem for more clarity
* The u-mlym.txt in the aspell-ml package contains the following entry
0x80..0xFF = U+0D00..U+0D7F
This is based on the fact that the range of Unicode for Malayalam
U+0D00..U+0D7F.

* But Malayalam scripts use U+200C and U+200D for the representation
of alphabets named "chillus" and for controlling the formation of
conjucts.Sometimes ZWS (U+200B) is also present the text.

* So if we use the existing u-mlym.txt , aspell will reject the
Malayalam words with ZWJ and ZWNJ

* One workaround solution for this is using unused points in the
Malayalam range. But this will cause problems in future if that code
points are used for some other purposes.

* A unicode review is under discussion to assign unicode points for
chillus. At that point our problem will get solved. But  unicode will
keep the old way of representing chillus using zwj for backward
compatibility. So problem will again  remain the same.

So please suggest a good solution, so that I can prepare a Aspell
dictionary for Malayalam. Let us know if you want a sample Malayalam
word list.

I could not understand the "private use area" solution you suggested.
Can you please explain it?

Thanks
Santhosh Thottingal