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[Malayalam] Modify the confusing wording of the consonant-ending RA #10

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lianghai
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The special form of RA that appears when it ends a consonant cluster is
called "vattu/rakar", not "reph".

The special form of RA that appears when it ends a consonant cluster is
called "vattu/rakar", not "reph".
@lianghai lianghai changed the title Correct the wrong wording of "vattu/rakar" [Malayalam] Correct the wrong wording of "vattu/rakar" Dec 10, 2014
@santhoshtr
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It is never called vattu in Malayalam( I can confirm as native Malayalee and provide references from books but Malayalam). The 'ra/ര' based sounds are called reph in Malayalam. The spec http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/malayalam/intro.htm is not helpful here, because it is mainly a copy paste from Devanagari.

@lianghai
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Okay. Since you're talking about OTL technologies in this chapter, if in Malayalam and other Indic languages there's a special "crossing naming" between cluster-starting RA (called "reph" in other Indic languages; while in Malayalam commonly called "dot reph" in English) and cluster-ending RA (called "vattu", or "rakar", or "raphala", etc, in other Indic languages; while called "reph" in Malayalam), maybe we could at least have a short note of this naming issue, otherwise it's very confusing.

I understand this kind of naming crossover really happens often across languages, but when it comes to technology terminology, it's always important to keep some consistency. We could surely have a local preference of using "reph" here, but, reph, vattu/rakar, virama… these terms generally have consistent and specific meanings across Unicode and OpenType terminologies (although they're often actually wrong if you examine from a certain language's angle of view), which really helps a lot for people to work and co-work on them. I guess the action of publishing these resources is not only for personal usage?

For the record, I'm not judging your wording according to Malayalam OTL specs.

@lianghai lianghai changed the title [Malayalam] Correct the wrong wording of "vattu/rakar" [Malayalam] Modify the confusing wording of the consonant-ending RA Dec 10, 2014
@lianghai
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My apology for my imprudent wording of "wrong". I thought they were merely typos.

@lianghai
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Sorry again. I wrongly compared the term "samvruthokaram" and "virama" directly in an earlier comment (should've compare "samvruthokaram" and "sequence <vowel sign / matra u, virama>"). Now that sentence got removed.

@santhoshtr
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maybe we could at least have a short note of this naming issue, otherwise it's very confusing.

👍

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