Reconsideration of encoding certain Sinhala consonant forms as atomic characters

[pathumego]

<TODO: Extract information from the following documents add context>

• In 2012 The Local Language Working Group (LLWG) of the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) submitted Issues with Sinhala symbols Rakaaraansaya and Yansaya. The document says the lack of support “offensive and unacceptable” Document concludes with the intention of submitting a proposal to encode Repaya and Rakaransaya and Yansaya atomically.

• Roozbeh Pournader and Cibu Johny posted Old and New Chillus in Malayalam and implications for Sinhala in 2013. Report suggests atomic encoding of the Yansaya (Ya-post), Rakaransaya (rakar) and Reapaya (reph) might not be beneficial and might create extra issues. In the conclusion it says“the authors will continue to push for better support for zero-­width characters in software, especially in Google products”, which they must have– most Google products now support rendering of ZWJ related properly.

• Most Issues outlined in the Issues with Sinhala symbols Rakaaraansaya and Yansaya document are software and implementation issues. Google already fixed the issue and recently Adobe announced full support for Sinhala ( therefore support for zero-­width characters)

• However, one issue is that will not be resolved unless above characters are atomically encoded is the Internationalized domain names (IDNs)
  In Sinhala Rakar form and Ya-post base are standard way of encoding and . So either we have to avoid using words with above occurrences or just go with the incorrect spellings. And for example the name of the country ’ශ්‍රී ලංකා‘ Sri Lanka can not be used in IDNs.

• <TODO: Collation order implications>

[lianghai]

A suggested title for UTC doc submission:

Reconsideration of encoding certain Sinhala consonant forms as atomic characters