Archaic Character Forms

As shown in figure 2, the consonant-vowel forms follow certain modern tamil conventions. (I use the terms modern and archaic loosely, and they only reflect current tamil standards in India, other countries may not follow these.) It is possible to get the older alternate character forms that print out thus:

<#47#>NA:<#47#> <#187#>#tex2html_accent_inline703#<#187#>5

<#49#>Nai:<#49#> <#188#>#tex2html_accent_inline704#<#188#>7

<#51#>No:<#51#> <#189#>#tex2html_accent_inline705#<#189#>9

<#53#>NO:<#53#> <#190#>#tex2html_accent_inline706#<#190#>11

<#55#>nA:<#55#> <#191#>#tex2html_accent_inline707#<#191#>13

<#57#>nai:<#57#> <#192#>#tex2html_accent_inline708#<#192#>15

<#59#>no:<#59#> <#193#>#tex2html_accent_inline709#<#193#>17

<#61#>nO:<#61#> <#194#>#tex2html_accent_inline710#<#194#>19

<#63#>Lai:<#63#> <#195#>#tex2html_accent_inline711#<#195#>21

<#65#>RA:<#65#> <#196#>#tex2html_accent_inline712#<#196#>23

<#67#>Ro:<#67#> <#197#>#tex2html_accent_inline713#<#197#>25

<#69#>RO:<#69#> <#198#>#tex2html_accent_inline714#<#198#>27

To enable these forms, you need to edit the wntml.ifm file: better make a copy, and name it wntmla.ifm, and edit the new file.

Search the wntmla.ifm file for the word <#71#>ARCHAIC<#71#>, and delete that word. You should see twelve such instances, corresponding to the characters above.

Once that is done, specify the new IFM file with the <#72#>\tamilifm<#72#> keyword, and all the above twelve consonant forms will print out as above. (See the user manual idoc.itx for exact details regarding the <#73#> \tamilifm<#73#> keyword.)