Offtopic : Unicode and Bengali

From: Dhrubajyoti Banerjee (dhrub@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Mar 05 2002 - 09:09:38 EST


Hi,
  I was taking a bit of time off by searching what is available for Unicode
on Indic Scripts. I came across this site.
    http://www.akshor.com/

Although I was quite amused at first, with excerpts like, "...To minimize
the codepage issue a brand new technology has lunched just a few years ago.
", I understood that people still do not (or do not even try to) understand
the basic philosophy behind coding standards.

For example:
"..In ISCII and Unicode, most of our conjuct characters are missing and
another complexity in the input method; to form a 'reph' above the letter
'ba', for example, it is necessary to type: 'ra hosonto ba', the software
will in turn then convert this into: 'ba with reph above'.
I thing we need not be restrained by these so-called 'standards'. Because,
they can't and will not serve our need (Bengali) in my humble view. Thats
why we toke this project at our hand and working to impliment a universal
input method.."
(http://www.akshor.com/project1.html)

And

"..Unicode Consortium assigned 0980-09FF for Bengali (see previous page).
But this is not enough to saperate all our characters. Thats why we used the
Private Used Area (E100-E4FF) of Unicode for our project to assign &
saperate all our characters (excluded in UCS) including extended
characters/glyps and symbols. "
(http://www.akshor.com/project2.html)

In fact they have put a huge number of "conjunct characters" in the Private
Use Area. Its a pity because it means that so many people still do not even
understand the difference between characters and glyphs.

I hope Unicode proliferates fast in these areas so people can understand it
and use it without wasting time in such activities as reinventing the wheel.

regards,
Dhruba

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