NAME
    App::Lingua::BO::Wylie::Transliteration

VERSION
    version 0.1.0

SYNOPSIS
    Wylie transliterate can be used to transliterate words from Wylie
    Transliteration to (Classical) Tibetan (dbu med)

BACKGROUND
    When you have one (foreign) alphabet and would like to display it in a
    different alphabet (example: Russian to Latin alphabet), you will want
    to use a certain transliteration scheme.

    Just compare all the different names you can find "Dostojevski"
    transliterated to, to see what enourmous differences there will be.

    Now for the Classical Tibetan "dbu med" alphabet there exist two main
    transliteration schemes:

    *   Library of Congress Transliteration

    *   Wylie Transliteration

    Classical Tibetan alphabet itself works in a really interesting way.

    First, let's have a look at the table of the individual "characters"
    with their Wylie transliterations:

    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_alphabet>

    A few key observations:

    *   (Almost) all letters represent a consonant, carrying an inherent
        vocal: "a"

    *   These letters/syllables are sorted according to tonality and
        aspiration (in pronunciation)

    *   Other vocals will be achieved by adding certain vocal-symbols in the
        proper places:

       * i.e. you can build the following syllables by adding a vowel sign:
         * ka -> ko
         * ka -> ku
         * ka -> ki
         * ka -> ke

    The latter is a process of merging symbols to form new symbols (with the
    merging taking place in the proper places -- 'e' is on top, 'u' will be
    inserted at the bottom)

    This merging process can be seen as building "ligatures", of which even
    more exist.

    As we have seen, the vocal symbols (for all vocals except 'a', which is
    inherent) need to be added in the proper places.

    For the rest of the symbols that can be added, the scheme looks the
    following:

             b  s  g   r   u   b  s
             |  |  |   |   |   |  |
             1  2  3   4   5   6  7

    With the places being the following:

    1) Prescript 2) Superscript 3) The Center piece (carriyng the inherent
    vocal, mandatory) 4) Subscript 5) The vocal sign 6) Postscript1 7)
    Postscript2

    Note: Except from the Center piece (3), all other signs are optional.

    Note: Optional character can form ligatures with the character they are
    combined with.

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND (UNICODE)
    The Unicode consortium had to decide what they want their code points to
    look like:

    a) either each altered base syllable is represented (i.e. ka, ko, ke,
    ki, ku) as a separate character (code point) b) the base syllables are
    represented and the altered syllables will be merged

    Since it was chosen for the latter, this has a few consequences:

    *   The graphical representation will depend on building ligatures and
        thus on the font you are using.

    *   That means you have to make sure you have appropriate fonts to
        display the signs correctly.

    Even if you find the ligatures not mixed together well (e.g. on your
    shell), you can still copy-paste the results somewhere else where you
    have a proper font available. Since only the code points are represented
    and it is up to the font to build the ligatures you will find the
    copy-pasted result come out very well with a proper font having the
    ligatures available.

    Copy-pasting your results
    here(http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/wyconverter.php)
    might help should the tibetan signs not be rendered correctly on your
    shell

USAGE
         echo bsgrubs | wylie-transliterate

    or

       wylie-transliterate <FILE>

MOTIVATION
    "Nobody needs such a module!" -- you might say. I agree. But the one
    person who might need it will be more than happy to have. (Given he/she
    finds it in the webz).

    Still though, let me just say:

    *   I do it because I can

    *   in my studies I visited a course "Classical Tibetan I"

    Really, I didn't learn too much about this interesting language, but a
    few things just stuck with me, such as the composition of characters to
    build words.

RESPONSIBILITIES / FEEDBACK
    I am in no way any expert in Classical Tibetan. I can't even read one
    sentence.

    But I can decipher one word!

    This module was written in the spirit of my fascination with the
    interesting system of this language and I would love to learn it for
    real some day.

    Please, if you are an expert and you find any errors, fixes, whatever --
    I call it your reponsibility to let me know!

    Please shoot me an email at: dbr @at@ cpan . org, thank you!

AUTHOR
    DBR <dbr@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    This software is copyright (c) 2013 by DBR.

    This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
    the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

