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Proposal to Encode the Khojki Script in ISO/IEC 10646

Publication Type  Other Document
Year of Publication  2009
Authors  Pandey, Anshuman
Notes  

From the Author:

I am writing to you in hopes of requesting you to post an item to your
ismaili.net website regarding my work on a Unicode standard for the
Khojki script, which was used to record the literature (ginans, etc) of
the Nizari Ismaili community of Sindh in South Asia.

My work on a Khojki standard for Unicode will enable the representation
of the script in the digital medium. Practically, this means that
Ismailis will be able to produce digital content in the script that was
originally used to record their literature. Secondly, my work will help
in the preservation of Khojki manuscripts.

My proposal to encode the Khojki script in Unicode is available at

http://www.umich.edu/~pandey/khojki.pdf

I am interested in comments from the Ismaili community. After all, I
developed this project so that Ismailis may use technology to preserve
and expand their culture.

Best regards,

Anshuman Pandey
Department of History
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.

Source  

University of Michigan, March 4, 2009

Length/Size  

39 pages


Proposal to Encode the Khojki Script in ISO/IEC 10646

Full text can be downloaded from the pdf attachment below.

Contents

Proposal Summary Form i

1 Introduction 1

2 Background 1

3 Characters Proposed 4

3.1 Character Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2 Basis for Character Set and Glyph Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3 Characters Not Proposed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

4 TheWriting System 7

4.1 General Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2 Inadequacies of the Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3 Supression of Inherent Vowel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.4 Consonant-Vowel Ligatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.5 Consonant Conjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.6 Nasalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.7 Consonant Gemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.8 Creation of New Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.9 Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.10 Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.11 Number Forms and Unit Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.12 Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5 Implementation 13

5.1 Encoding Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.2 Collation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.3 Character Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.4 Outstanding Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6 References 18

List of Tables

1 Glyph chart for Khojki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2 Names list for Khojki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

List of Figures

1 Inventory of Khojki vowel letters from Grierson (1905) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2 Inventory of Khojki consonant letters from Grierson (1905) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3 Inventory of Khojki consonant letters from Grierson (1905) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4 Inventory of Khojki independent vowel letters from Asani (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5 Inventory of Khojki dependent vowel signs from Asani (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6 Inventory of Khojki consonants (b to dy) from Asani (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7 Inventory of Khojki consonants (jh to s) from Asani (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
8 Inventory of Khojki consonants (sh to l) from Asani (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
9 Inventory of Khojki consonants (m to dhr) from Asani (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
10 Traditional arrangement of Khojki characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
11 Arrangement of Khojki characters on the traditional Indic phonological pattern . . . . . . . . . . 29
12 Comparison of Khojki with other scripts (a to au) from Khakee (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
13 Comparison of Khojki with other scripts (ka to d.
a) from Khakee (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
14 Comparison of Khojki with other scripts (d.
ha to ba) from Khakee (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
15 Comparison of Khojki with other scripts (bha to ha) from Khakee (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
16 Comparison of Khojki with other scripts (ra to sra) from Khakee (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
17 Title page of the So K¯ır¯ı¯a printed in Khojki and Gujarati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
18 Pages from a Khojki book printed with the metal fonts cut by Laljibhai Devraj . . . . . . . . . . 34
19 Hand-written Khojki in a printed English-language catalogue of Ismaili literature . . . . . . . . . 35

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