Date: Fri Nov 26 2004 - 19:18:02 LKT
To: Anuradha Ratnaweera <email-not-shown>
CC: Delan Silva <email-not-shown>, harshula <email-not-shown>
Thanks for the mail
Now I have some dialogue open to discuss.
SLS 1134 do have only 80 characters. Rest of the characters are hidden somewhere!!!!!
We got to follow SLS 1134.
Sorting get upset because (SLS1134) it get sorted into "konbuwa" "ka" "ispilla"and so on.
The first problem is to solve the SLS 1134
To include all the individual characters into unicode.
Once this is done everything will fall in line irrespective to OS.
If one have an individual characters we can sort all the data into ascending and descending order. (eg telephone directory)
If you have an individual character allocation table or matrix SMS , OCR , Voice to text will get solved including e dictionary and encyclopedia
Do not worry about the total number of characters which is around 2000+
All these will be able to access trough the normal QWERTY key board or the Wijesekera Key board
How one key in is not the problem the OS will select the correct character from the matrix and image it.
I have that solution with copyrights.
When you are free please call me 258-8893. (When you call keep a print out of the jpg image I have sent with you)
Can have a casual talk based on this and then we can meet.
I am a MAC user.
Best
Donald
________
Ans to your comments
===========
Well, I thought of it to be a problem when I started on localization of GNU/Linux some time back, but later realized that it is not a problem, but rather simplifies matters, and more importantly, the language (which we all love most and don't want to be destroyed in any way) doesn't loose anything. Particularly, representing yansaya, rakaaraansaya, bandi-akuru and repaya (and even the character ddh, as in "visuddhi margaya") have never been a problem for us. Hope you saw this screenshot:I am Quoting a part of the text for your perusal . What is written below is hurts me a lot. Hope it is same for you. You can download the full text from
http://www.fonts.lk/doc/sinhala%20standards.pdf.
5.1 Conjunct letters
Unicode does not encode any conjunct letters,
Such letters are a shorthand for writing a pure
5.2 Yansaya and Rakaransaya
A frequent critisism of Unicode is the lack of codes for the
yansaya and rakaransaya. The Unicode documents fail to
mention these two symbols. However, we realised that this
omission was deliberate, as neither of these symbols are
Sinhala letters.
Above comments are made by
1st Regional Conference on ICT and E-Paradigms
24th – 26th June 2004, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Development of Standards for Sinhala Computing
Gihan Dias and Aruni Goonetilleke
ICT Agency
Anuradha Ratnaweera wrote:
On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 09:23:25 +0600, Donald Gaminitillake <semage@mail.ewisl.net> wrote:Thank you for the links and introducing my site to your friends.Nice to meet you! I am CCing Harshula, who is our standards expert.The problem I find is the "TEXT" data will not be compatible with other Operating Systems.Hmmm.... Well, I don't know how far Microsoft have made progress along this, but those who tested the Sinhala translation of our site (http://test.linux.lk) reported it to be perfect from MS windows. Fortunately, I don't use Windows at all... ;-)This is simply because the SLS 1134 - unicode do not have all the sinhala characters in its matrix.Well, I thought of it to be a problem when I started on localization of GNU/Linux some time back, but later realized that it is not a problem, but rather simplifies matters, and more importantly, the language (which we all love most and don't want to be destroyed in any way) doesn't loose anything. Particularly, representing yansaya, rakaaraansaya, bandi-akuru and repaya (and even the character ddh, as in "visuddhi margaya") have never been a problem for us. Hope you saw this screenshot: http://www.linux.lk/~anuradha/sinhala/screenshots/0.1-0.2/bendi-akuru.png And in my humble opinion (please correct me if I am wrong), Unicode has simplified sorting.This is the only issue I have.I am genuinly interested in understanding your views. However, as of now, I don't see a problem in not having seperate characters. On the other hand, I don't think it is practical to have every form of a character (say "ki", "kii", "ke", "kee" etc) a seperate code.We all got to join and make voice to include all individual characters into the SLS 1134.Please let me understand the exact issue, and if we are convinced about the issue. Perhaps, we are missing something.Just beause a keyboard having a key cap character locations will not image the language without the OS support If any OS supports a particular language you can use any keyboard to access it. Key caps are just a guide line for the humans.I understand if there is a one to one relationship between keystrokes and characters, some issues will be simplified. But there are yet other issues - notably sorting - which is extremely straightforward with the present Unicode standard. Harshula has created some keymaps for the present standard, and seems to work great for me. Looking forward to hear from you. Anuradha
