At 10:17 +0630 2008-07-25, Ngwe Tun wrote:
For Burmese, It's different from English
situation. Microsoft Windows XP and older
operating system are widely used by Burmese
People.
Yes, and they have to migrate to Unicode 5.1.
Otherwise we will simply have continued encoding
chaos on my.wiki. I don't see any other option.
*If there are Unicode 5.1 fonts, perhaps
incomplete, perhaps complete, then fine. People
can use those.*
Absolutely, There are no problem concern with
fonts. There are 3 Unicode Fonts for Burmese. At
First, <http://my.wikipedia.org>my.wikipedia.org
is not suited for other ethnics characters and
Buddhist teaching concern. That's fine.
Excuse me, but I object here. The Myamnar block
in Unicode contains many characters. Some are
used in Sanskrit in Burmese. Some are used in
minority languages. "Buddhist teaching concerns"
are legitimate articles for the Myanmar
Wikipedia, and users may wish to cite Sanskrit
words there. So you cannot say that the Sanskrit
characters in Unicode are irrelevant or should be
ignored. They may be part of data. Some Unicode
5.1 fonts support this behaviour, some do not. I
have proposed to Wikimedia that we investigate
what level of support each font has so that users
can choose which ones they want. This is POSITIVE
comptetition. A font (let's say Padauk or
Parabaik) which doesn't correctly render a
Sanskrit word might be improved. Or it might have
fallback rendering. But at least we would know.
Similarly, the Myanmar scripts minority
characters may find their way into texts on the
Myanmar wikipedia. Look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorsteinn_Pálsson
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilham_Aliyev and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lech_Walesa. Each of
these men uses letters in his name which are
unrecognized by English speakers. Yet those
letters are used in the English wikipedia --
sometimes for the article title, sometimes just
in the text. So when Ngwe Tun says that
"<http://my.wikipedia.org>my.wikipedia.org is not
suited for other ethnics characters" I cannot
agree with him. Font developers should be
encouraged to support the whole block of Myanmar
characters, at least at some level. If not, then
we can state so, and users can choose the fonts
they wish.
Why we need to wait anymore. But for the Zawgyi
fans and old operating system users might not be
seen proper Burmese characters because encoding
standards are different from Zawgyi and Unicode
4.1 What ever we need to think long run. I
strongly recommended to store Unicode 5.1.
On this Ngew Tun and I are agreed. :-)
*What would the problem be with this? Would it
render the site unusable for people who are
using only Zawgyi?*
We should support any Wikipedian who are willing
to write with any font/encoding. But we can
convert those input texts with different
encoding by internal converter.
That's just going to be
It's meaning to say Zawgyi text can be
converted into Unicode 5.1. I suppose to do
accessibility problem is key issues for every
language. Michael figured out that multiple
platform would be fine. I would like to propose
again that multiple font encoding must support
in <http://my.wikipedia.org>my.wikipedia.org
I don't think this is feasible. You're going to
have to have a suite of browser plug-ins
(platform specific) which will be smart enough to
detect what encoding people are using and convert
losslessly back and forth between the encodings.
And there are several encodings and
pseudo-encodings out there. And then there is the
question of when *this* gets phased out in the
future. Ten years from now when the last Windows
XP computer dies? It just delays the migration.
Also what happens when somebody selects text in
the browser window and pastes it into an e-mail?
You'll have encoding incompatibility there too,
and your plug-in will not help you there.
Be clear enough. I do not support storing non-Unicode
5.1 Standards.
Good.
But we must support converted HTML in Zawgyi, MyaZedi
and such dated Fonts.
I can't see how this can be supported on the Wiki side.
Well, Here is solution to put converter in wiki.
<http://mmbotconvert.vndv.com/>http://mmbotconvert.vndv.com/
It's off-line converter for Zawgyi<>Unicode 5.1.
It can be engaged with Wiki Textbox. Let me
explain 1 scenario, A Wikipedian will go Myanmar
CyberCafe. Cybercafe may not allow to install
Unicode 5.1 Fonts.
The customer should complain.
But In their machine, They installed Zawgyi Font.
They shouldn't. I don't think we should encourage
the perpetuation of non-Unicode fonts.
--
Michael Everson *
http://www.evertype.com