Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!motcsd!lance
From: lance@motcsd.csd.mot.com (lance.norskog)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: Character sets: ISO 6937 vs ISO 8859
Message-ID: <2089@greek.csd.mot.com>
Date: 7 Nov 90 22:27:43 GMT
References: <183*eskovgaa@uvcw.UVic.ca> <9813.657849751@nma.com>
Organization: Motorola CSD, Cupertino CA
Lines: 17

Stef@ICS.UCI.EDU (Einar Stefferud) writes:

>Are there any other idiogram alphabets?  

It gets worse.  One of the Indian subcontinent language families, 
I believe Hindi and its derivatives, uses modified characters.
Under this system, the word "snake" becomes "snakes" 
by adding a squiggle to the bottom leg of the "s".
Different squiggles means "red snake" or "angry snake".

So, to render a word, you have to treat it as a grammatical parse tree,
with a word and possible modifiers, render the first letter of the 
base word, the rest of the word, and then apply the modifiers to the 
first letter.  

This was explained to me a long time ago, and I'm sure it's bollixed,
but you get the drift.