ambuda-org/vidyut

vidyut-lipi doesn't handle Grantha/Tamil numbers correctly

Closed this issue · 8 comments

deepestblue commented

Grantha numbers (and Tamil numbers) aren't a place value system, and are instead representations of the Tamil words for the number. vidyut-lipi doesn't seem to have logic for that.

Transliterate ३२४५ from Devanagari to Grantha.

Expected: ௩௲௨௱௪௰௫
Actual: ३२४५

You can find many more test cases in https://github.com/deepestblue/saulabhyaJS/blob/main/test/saulabhya.test.js#L147

akprasad commented

. (wrong issue)

akprasad commented

Thanks for filing this issue. I think this is important to support, though I notice that this behavior is not implemented by Aksharamukha or indic_transliteration, so feel free to file issues against those projects as well.

I will probably model this as a default-true flag that the user can disable if so desired.

akprasad commented

@deepestblue I have some local code that passes your test suite for converting to and from Grantha numbers.

Some questions:

  1. How should an invalid number be handled?
  2. Are there contexts where place value notation would be valuable instead (Modern example: printing out a serial number)? If so, how should these be represented?
  3. Is this system used in modern Tamil as well? I see mixed evidence, e.g. here I see 100, ௱, and க00 all used.
deepestblue commented

Good questions :-)

  1. Feels like a quality of implementation issue? GIGO? I guess better than that would be to signal an error in whatever mechanism vidyut-lipi uses.
  2. I'm not sure I've seen Grantha used in modern contexts like that, so I'm not sure this is important.
  3. Yes, it is, but Tamil numbers are rarely used and aren't taught in schools even in Tamil Nadu (not sure about Sri Lanka, Singapore etc.), so I'm not surprised if there's dwindling awareness.
deepestblue commented

BTW, https://omniglot.com/language/numbers/malayalam.htm seems to suggest Malayalam numbers are similar, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam_numerals says that's an archaic mechanism, and the new one is a simple place-value system. Not sure ...

akprasad commented

I've completed my local setup and will close this issue when the code is complete. For the record:

  1. For now, I don't have any special error handling for this and take a GIGO approach.
  2. Confirmed.
  3. For now, I've limited this code to just Grantha, but the logic should be easy to adapt to other scripts that need it.
akprasad commented

Pushed and deployed to our online demo.

deepestblue commented

Looks good to me! All my tests pass :-)

  • 🎉1