[Debian-in-workers] Re: N(ew)L(anguage)P(rocess) for Sanskrit

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2005, Mahesh Pai wrote:

>
> Dont have my mail archves on this machine, but IIRC, the Govt. Of
> India proposes to have a separate set of code points for Sanskrit.
>
> Both Sanskrit and Konkani use the devanagari (hindi) script.
> The suggestion for separate codepoints, IIRC is because sanskrit uses
> plenty of pronounciation markers.
>

This is only true for Vedic texts.  (well technically Paninian Sanskrit 
also has udatta and anudatta but one they already are covered by unicode 
and two they are not used in any Sanskrit text of the past two millenia.)

I believe this is the proposal you are referring to.

> Also, Sanskrit has no association with any geograpical area - it is
> regarded as the language of the elite.

That's no reason not to have a locale though.  There are conventions for 
dates, currency symbols etc. in Sanskrit just like for any other language.

>
> While including locale info for sanskrit is required, I am not sure
> that we should spend time *translating* into Sanskrit - people who
> speak Sanskrit are so well educated that they will typically know at
> least 2 - TWO other languages, They would be:- their mother tongue, if
> it is not Hindi, Hindi, and at least one other language which, in all
> probalities, will be English.
>

Since when did practicality have anything to do with free software? :-) 
The rule is if someone has an interest in it and is willing to do the 
work, it gets done otherwise it doesn't.  Which is probably why we will be 
seeing Klingon and Elvish translations of the installer soon. :-)

Personally I agree there are higher priorities though.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at debian.org>
La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/