Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!jarthur!euler.claremont.edu!dhosek
From: dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: MF questions for a Indo-Iranian langauge; handling vowels
Message-ID: <1991Mar23.134559.1@euler.claremont.edu>
Date: 23 Mar 91 21:45:59 GMT
References: <037D7690B6017C82@Post-Office.UH.EDU> <9103220256.AA01258@orion.arc.nasa.gov> <39672@netnews.upenn.edu>
Sender: news@jarthur.Claremont.EDU
Organization: Harvey Mudd College
Lines: 56

In article <39672@netnews.upenn.edu>, kalita@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Jugal Kolita) writes:
>    When we print the word `kar' in Assamese, what we actually
> 	print is something like `k|r' where the vertical
> 	bar is a "short" form or sign for the vowel `a'. This is
> 	because the vowel `a' follows a consonent `k'.

You need TeX 3.X/MF 2.X to handle the things I'm describing;
these features might *not* be in your MFbook if it's older than
about a year.

For XY->Xy, the ligtable entry looks like
ligtable "X": "Y" |=: "y";

>    Let us take another more complex example. There is a vowel that 
> 	corresponds to the dipthong "oe" (Let's assume it
> 	can be typed as one character--say capital `U'). 
> 	It's printed as itself
> 	when
> 	it is the first letter of a word or in some other
> 	special situations. But, when it occurs after
> 	a consonent, say `k' as in `kUr', ther
> 	way it is printed as something like  `[k|r' where the
> 	vowel's short form or sign has two parts
> 		a) one (i.e., the `[')
> 		    occuring before the consonent `k', and 
> 		b) the other (i.e., the `|')
> 		     occuring after the consonent.

Two ways to do this one: 
we have XY->xXy, so we could define xXy to be a single character
and have
"X" : "Y" =: "xXy";
however the number of "xXy" combinations might be prohibitively
large, so we might also want to try an approach along the lines
of
"X" : "Y" =:| "xX"; % xX is a single char, we now have "xXY"
"xX" : "Y" |=: "y"; % and now we have xXy (two characters)

a third possibility would be to have the character at "Y" be the
post-consonantal form "y" and use the boundary char ligatures.

For a complete description of the new ligtable opcodes without
buying the MFbook, get the file tex3.dif from ymir.claremont.edu
in [anonymous.sources.tex3_1]. btw, I feel this presentation is
superior to that in the MFbook).

-dh

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