Re: [Wikita-l] [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic languages & unicode issues.

Sadly, you're not alone in this, Santhosh. We have had canonical non-equivalence issues and many more (similar to the atomic chillu issue) in Tamil too. :( Part of it was inherited from the umbrellaish ISCII model (done with good intentions, I believe). They put the abugidas of the Indo-Aryan languages and other systems like

(haven't studied other writing systems enough to comment upon) into one

and we're still suffering for that. They cite stability when legitimate

are sought, but allow such breaking changes. I'm sure you'll be working with the search engines to map the equivalent

hidden texts (though not ideal). - Sundar "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for

expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture ----- Original Message ---- > From: Santhosh Thottingal <santhosh.thottingal(a)gmail.com> > To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. ><wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Sent: Sun, December 26, 2010 10:28:17 PM > Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic languages & unicode issues. > > On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 7:43 PM, CherianTinu Abraham > <tinucherian(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi all, > > Happened to see Gerard's blog post on issues with Malayalam Wikipedia > > & Unicode upgrade to > > 5.1 http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/12/malayalam-enigma.html > > > The issue is very complex. There were heated debates around this topic > in Unicode Indic Mailing list for years. In short the issue is about > dual encoding- representing a letter using two types of unicode > character codes. Unicode's decision to bring the second encoding in > standard was widely debated and opposed mainly by FOSS developer > community from Malayalam. Unicode announced the dual encoding scheme > without canonical equivalence definition in 2005 and reverted it when > scholars and developers opposed it. > The same proposal again introduced. Foss community, language scholars > protested the proposal. The SMC community submitted a document with 17 > reasons why dual encoding should not be introduced.- see > http://wiki.smc.org.in/images/2/23/SMC_Unicode_5.1.pdf > Similarly a seminar conducted to discuss the issue by University of > Kerala opposed the proposal. see >http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080131071131/fci/images/1/19/Report_of_Workshop.pdf

>f > But Unicode technical consortium did not bother to answer both of > these reports and went ahead with the decision in Unicode 5.1. The > dual encoding scheme is with out any canonical equivalence definition. > Since it is not there in standard I doubt whether Operating systems > will implement it, not to mention about search engines. > > Since the new encoding scheme is defined without backward > compatibility, or against unicode's stability policy, Malayalam FOSS > community decided not to implement it until issues are resolved and > continuing with unicode 5.0 encoding. Malayalam news portals also > follow unicode 5.0. Most of the tools from Google also continue with > unicode 5.0 based encoding. Malayalam wikipedia decided to go ahead > with latest version of unicode. I had resisted this move in the > discussion pages of Malayalam wikipedia. The decision was taken based > on voting by a small community of editors and not based on proper > technical analysis. > > > Believe it or not, this is how Malayalam wiki is rendered inWindows XP > IE 8 box with OS default font: > http://thottingal.in/tmp/ml-wiki-winxp-IE8.png > I hope it gives some clue about the issue that Gerard mentioned. > > Most of the discussions happened around the encoding issue was in > Malayalam(in Malayalam wiki or in blogs), but this English blog post > might summarize it > http://www.j4v4m4n.in/2009/11/07/unicode-or-malayalam/ > > > Discussions happened in Malayalam wikipedia(content in Malayalam > language) >http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/വിക്കിപീഡിയ:പഞ്ചായത്ത്_(സാങ്കേതികം)/യൂണികോഡ്_5.1.0/ചർച്ച_(പഴയവ)

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