[Tugindia] First impression of "devnag"

Somendra M Bhattacharjee tugindia@tug.org
Mon, 16 Dec 2002 22:11:23 +0530 (IST)


Hello,

In bangtex (for bangla) by P. B. Pal, (no preprocessor required)

Sumit Bharadwaj   --> su\*m*it bhorodWaj 
        (nonphonetic: suimt BrdWaj)     
Hardeep Singh Rai  -->  Hordiip \*s*iNNGH raI 
Somendra Bhattacharjee --> \*s*ea\*m*en/dRo bhoT/Tacar/JYo
                           (nonpho: esaemn/dR BT/Tacar/JY)

The problem, at least in Bangla, is that the way we spell a word  is not 
the way we write. (we say "me" of somen  as  "m e"  but write it as 
"e m" and "so" as  "e s a" !)
Juktakkhor (Bangla of ligature ) are written as built-in fractions, as one 
would in mathematics.
"o" is the unwriiten "o" sound.
(boson/to, bsn/t, boosoon/too all would give the same output, 
third one  useless, second one reduces the number of keystrokes, 
the first one makes the tex file readble.)
Similarly, bh may be replaced by B, but we are all biased by the existing
transliteration rules  for names (and that rule cannot depend on 
capitalization).    A few aapitals are special  like R, M, L and 
the independent vowles. 

There is definitely no harm is writing a noncomprehensible, yet 
processable, tex file but it pays to have a readable file. 
Also proofreading, changing, searching  etc becomes easier.

smb