Re: [PATCH] Improve Malayalam language transliteration

[James Thomas <jimjoe@gmx.net>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: James Thomas <jimjoe@gmx.net>
>> Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2020 21:51:06 +0530
>> 
>> >> -(if nil
>> >> -    (quail-define-package "malayalam-itrans" "Malayalam" "MlmIT" t "Malayalam ITRANS"))
>> >> -(quail-define-indian-trans-package
>> >> - indian-mlm-itrans-v5-hash "malayalam-itrans" "Malayalam" "MlmIT"
>> >> - "Malayalam transliteration by ITRANS method.")
>> >
>> > I'm not sure I understand: does this delete the ITRANS method?  Would
>> > it make sense to leave it, and just add the new one?  And please also
>> > note that lisp/language/indian.el references the malayalam-itrans
>> > method; should that be changed as well?
>> 
>> Yes this does delete and replace it.  I guess we could keep the ITRANS
>> method also, but it's practically unusable for Malayalam (given its
>> uniqueness and quirks) and not even defined for all its characters - for e.g.,
>> the common characters ള (La), ഴ (zha), റ (rra) are missing. As I
>> understand it, it was developed for Devanagari and was easily adapted
>> to similar Indian languages. The Mozhi scheme is a way of expanding it
>> to support Malayalam.
>
> That's okay, but we don't like deleting existing capabilities without
> some period during which it's deprecated.  So maybe say in NEWS that
> ITRANS is deprecated, and add a comment in quail/indian.el that it
> should be removed in some future release.

Okay, it's settled then. I'll send in a patch with such changes.

>
>> Sorry I missed the reference in lisp/language/indian.el. It seems to be
>> just defining the default input method for the language. Can be changed
>> easily if decided.
>
> If you think this new method is much better, it's okay to make it the
> default, I think.  Just mention that in NEWS.

Will do that too in the new patch.

>
> Thanks.
>
> P.S. And please keep the list address on the CC, so that this
> discussion is recorded.

--
Jim