FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT schemamania.org>]

On Wed, 4 Sep 2002 07:08:10 +0100, "Thompson, Bill D (London)"
<ThompBil AT exchange.uk.ml.com> wrote:

> > The Unicode manual is facinating reading if you have any interest in
> > I18N.
> 
> I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm beginning to get a bit
> worried about jkl.
> When's the last time you had a vacation, jim ?

Oh, bother.  "Never recommend a book or a woman to anyone."  Sage advice,
if followed.  

I think that the way various languages have evolved is facinating, and
learned a lot of gory detail studying Unicode.  I like learning anything
that upsets my assumptions about the world.  

For instance, in Tamil there are two representations for several vowels. 
One is standalone and simple.  The other is in combination with a
consonant.  I can't show you the glyphs here in ascii, so imagine the
vowel for an 'O' sound written as two parts:  X_X.  To make what you might
spell "ko", Tamil's script would surround the consonant with the vowel:
XkX (if you will).  I thought langages were all written right to left, or
left to right, or snakelike (as ancient Greek), or vertically, as Chinese.
But no: Why not circular?  Who knew?  

BTW, could you and Frediano send me SGML patches (it's not hard) for your
inclusion under "Codesmyths" in the User Guide?  I'd like to add your
names, what you did, and any email address you'd like included.  

Regards, 

--jkl