Re: [CSS Counter Styles] Tamil (was: Minutes Santa Clara F2F 2014-10-28 Part III: Text, Selections, Counter Styles)

On Jan 2, 2015 10:15 AM, "Jonathan Kew" <jfkthame@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/1/15 14:53, Dael Jackson wrote:
>
>>    TabAtkins: One issue was about a handful of styles that browsers
>>               have implemented but weren't in the draft since we cut
>>               it down. I want to add the ones with high
>>               interoperability.
>>    TabAtkins: About 20 styles are implemented since they are
>>               dependable for authors.
>>    TabAtkins: The ones that aren't clear is the Tamil style, which is
>>               only Firefox and this list:
>>    <TabAtkins> afar, oromo, sidama, tigre
>
>
> [snip]
>
>>    RESOLVED: Add to Counter Styles the additional styles supported by
>>              2+ browsers (per r12a's email), do not add the styles
>>              supported by only one browser.
>
>
> AIUI, this implies that Tamil will be excluded from the predefined
styles, as it is currently supported only by Firefox.
>
> I believe this would be a very unfortunate situation. Tamil is one of the
nine basic scripts of India (see [1], for example):
>
>   Bengali
>   Devanagari
>   Gujarati
>   Gurmukhi
>   Kannada
>   Malayalam
>   Oriya [Odia]
>   Tamil
>   Telugu
>
> These are the Indic-family scripts used (along with Latin script, for
English, and the Perso-Arabic script for Urdu and Sindhi) to write the
official state languages of India, and form a clear, well-understood set
that are expected to be treated on an equal footing.
>
> To provide predefined counter styles for eight of these, and exclude the
ninth, will appear arbitrary and capricious; will be confusing to authors;
and may even lead to accusations of discrimination against one of India's
major linguistic communities.
>
> Please reconsider the status of Tamil. The nine major Indian scripts
should be supported as a set of equals, not divided into what will appear
to be first- and second-class citizens.

Our decision to leave Tamil out was based on a simple impl-based criteria.
I was not aware that we had included the other 8 major Indian languages.
The hole is probably very obvious for Indian-language speakers, and
unfortunately easy to misinterpret. I agree that we should include Tamil
despite it having only one current implementation.

~TJ