Guides to how Sinhala and Tamil scripts work: orthography, script mechanics, Unicode and the vocabulary of type.
History
The letterforms of Sinhala type were set less by scribes than by three presses: the Dutch Government Press in Colombo, the Serampore Mission Press in Bengal and the Wesleyan Mission Press in Colombo. How a script shaped by the stylus became a script cast in metal, from 1737 to the 1860s.
Unicodeසිංහල
Unicode-ට පෙර පැවති අක්ෂර කේත ක්රම සිට සිංහල අක්ෂර සංයෝග, ZWJ සහ බැඳි අකුරු දක්වා — සිංහල යුනිකේතය පිළිබඳ විස්තරාත්මක මාර්ගෝපදේශයක්.
Script mechanics
Every Sinhala consonant carries an inherent a. Vowel signs, called pili, change that vowel. This guide covers what they are, how Unicode stores them in logical order, and what a font has to do to draw them.
Script mechanics
Unlike most Indic scripts, Tamil writes consonant clusters with a visible dot rather than stacked conjuncts. The real complexity is in its vowel ligatures. This guide covers both, and what the 1978 script reform changed.