2008/7/26 Michael Everson
<everson@evertype.com>
>1. As mentioned in Ko Ngwe Tun's previous
>discussion, we use internet cafe computers and
>have less option for installing new fonts or
>browser based addon.
IT experts in Myanmar should certainly be
encouraging internet cafés to migrate to Unicode
5.1. And if there are Facebook or Flicker sites
using non-Unicode encodings, those should also be
encouraged to migrate, as Htoo and I have been
trying to do with the Wikipedia.
I'd agree, but there is one key issue nobody seems to be addressing. Most users are using a pre-Vista version of Windows, and currently I am unaware of any legal software solutions for rendering Myanmar Unicode 5.1 on pre-Vista Windows, other than a handful of specialist SIL applications running Graphite, and some very old experiemnts in Firefox and OpenOffice
For uptake, it needs to be easy and free or very very cheap.
>2. Myanmar Unicode has history of breaking
>previous version and luck of migration support.
>It is rather strange that there is NO convertor
>available for myanmar1 (Unicode 4.0) to myanmar2
>(Unicode 4.1) or myanmar2 to myanmar3 (Unicode
>5.1).
It isn't Unicode's place to make such a
converter. The owners of myanmar1, myanmar2, and
myanmar3 should have a care for the problem. But
there *are* converters available for text
conversion.
agree, and from memory a nnumber of convertors exist
>3. Unicode font are not redistributation (yes
Some fonts are re distributable, but Uniscribe isn't.
>5. Unicode font input methods are low quality,
>extra cost or branding. Zawgyi uers has long
>being enjoy phonetic input.
This is a furphy.
There is absolutely no reason why Unicode 5.1 can't be phonetic. Although I question why it should be phoentic or more properly psuedo-phonetic.
Likewise a keyboard layout could be either based on a logical or visual keyboard layout.
This is just an implementation issue, the reality is that keyboard layout developers choose to implement keyboards certain ways, using certain technologies.
Zawgyi users are forced to encode their language
texts in a non-standard way. This will only hurt
them, and Myanmar, in the long run, as it does in
the short run.
From the point of view of keyboard layout design principles the Zawgyi keyboard layout is sub-optimal with many design problems. Even if you decide to implement a phonetic keyboard for Unicode 5.1 you would not base it on the Zawgyi layout. The Zawgyi layout uses teh same approach as legacy 8-bit fonts essentally. The Zawgyi layout indicates that the font doesn't support complex rendering, and the layout wasn't implemented for a "smart" input system.
>Myanmar Wikipedia should not take the burdon. At
>bottom line, Wkipedia is providing knowledge,
>not font. Also people don't think Wikipedia is
>good enough to install a new font.
In part I'd agree, Myanmar Wikipedia should not be a burden. Although I don't think that avoiding font downlaods solves teh problem.
At some point people will start migrating, Optimising the CSS will allow people to use any Uniocde 5.1 font they have is a necessary approach. Hopefully over tiem they determien which font suits tehir needs best. I'd rather ot tie it to a single font, whether its one particular uniocde 5.1 font or Zawgyi.