Lepcha

The revised proposal for encoding the Lepcha script has been posted to the Unicode Mail List, Monday July 4, 2005. The fonts created by Jason Glavy have already been in use along with the Lepcha Language Kit based on the tentative codepoints in Unicode.

The proposal with the proposed codepoints and collation sequence is about 4 pages long and the figures or illustrations make up the last 15 pages. The following illustrations are included.

• punctuation
• the nukta
• history of the script
• comparison with other Indo-Tibetan scripts
• examples of handwritten text from a variety of sources
• more than one consonant array
• lists of the vowels
• a syllabary chart or syllabarium
• table of Lepcha nominal glyphs in Unicode
• the unicode codepoints

Now, I confess to a problem. For many this may look like a fairly dry and boring list. But to some of us who love writing systems the list might just as well be from the map provided in the top of a box of chocolates. The problem is not how to pay attention to such details, but rather which one to study first.

Hmm, shall I try the cream ganache or the espresso, the almond praline or hazelnut, the nougatine or caramel? Each person will have their favourite flavour and may choose to dig right in and flood their mouth with the taste, or savour it at the end.

My obsession right now is the handwriting, the shapes, the direction, the spacing, etc. The syllabary first and the handwriting last with everything else in between. Unlike chocolates I can go back and study it all again.

I hope that this will not be seen of as a trivialization of a serious undertaking. With all due respect - read on. Proposal for encoding the Lepcha script