UNICODE

1
UNICODE Indic Scripts

• Dr. Mukul K Sinha
• Expert Software Consultants Ltd., New Delhi
• expert_at_vsnl.com

2
Indian Languages Scripts

• Indian Languages 22 Constitutionally Recog.
• Scripts 11 (3 Mithilakshar / Olchiki /
  Maitie Mayank)
• Devnagari 8, Bangala -3, Gurumukhi,
  Gujarati, Oriya,
• Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam/ Roman/
  Perso-Arabian 3
• (Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Maithili,
  Santhali, Bodo, Dogri)
• (Bangala, Assameses, Manipuri), (Urdu,
  Kashmiri,Sindhi)
• Literate Population 65, English 5,
  Multi-lingual mostly
• Digital Divide Language Divide ?!
• Need of Indic Language Computing
  Environment!

3
Scripts of Population

• Devnagari - 49.76
• Bangala - 10.2
• Telugu - 8.1
• Tamil - 6.5
• Arabic/Pers. - 6.1

• Gujarati - 5.1
• Kannada 4.0
• Malayalam 3.7
• Oriya - 3.5
• Gurumukhi 2.9
• ..
• Govt. of India
• 1997 Survey

4
Scripts Print Internet

• Population Print
  Web
• Latin 39 72 84
• CJK 22 25 13
• Indic 22 2.2 0.3
• Year 2000
• Language Script
• Europe (11) 1
• Indic (184) 12

5
Indic Scripts ISCII

• Dept. of Electronics Indian Script Standard
  Committee 1986 88
• ISCII 1998.
• ISCII 1989 8 bit character Code (Lower Set
  ASCII )
• Escape sequence for Script identity.
• Brahmi-based-covering 9 Indic scripts
• (Transliteration automatic)

6
Unicode Consortium - History

• Consortium / Non-profit / Regd. -1991 - USA.
• Open Standard / ISO W3C
• Members Corporate / Institutional - Voting
• Assoc. / Individual - Non-voting
• To meet implementation needs
• that will not be invalidated any time in future

7
Unicode

• For Characters (Scripts / Ideographs / Symbols/)
• NOT Glyphs.
• Platform independent.
• Content Inter-operable / Inter-change.
• Availability of tools for text processing.
• Global Presence.

8
Unicode Version

• Unicode
• Version 1/1.1/1.2 1991 / 92 / 93
• Version 2.0 /2.1 1996 /97 Internet Web
• Version 3.0/3.1/3.2 2000 /1 /2 India
  Govt.
• Version 4.0/4.1 2003/2004 96,382
  (70,207)
• Version 5.0 -

9
Unicode Technical Specification

• Code Area - 0 10FFFF (Hexadecimal)
• Basic Multilingual Plane
• 0- FFFF 16 bit Code (2bytes) Plane 0
• E000 F000 (Private Use Area)
• Plane 1 .. Plane 2 .. Plane 15 (PUA- A)
  PUA-B
• PUA (National standard Vendor Specific Codes)
  (Japanese NEC Fujitsu)
• Indic Script One code page for each language
• For Information Exchange UTF 8 (8 bit byte
  string)
• can be 1 to 4 (UTF-8) bytes

10
Unicode Indic Scripts

• Conjuncts Glyphs for rendering (not for
  Unicode)
• - Multiple ways to express
• -
• ZWNJ (U200C) / ZWJ (U200D)
• Collation - Unicode Language Order
  different
• - Devnagari Hindi /Marathi
• - Latin (Danish / Norwegion Ä / Ö)
• (Hungarian / German)

11
Unicode Stability Policy

• Encoding Stability
• - Code NOT to be moved /removed
• - Later version Superset of Earlier Version
• Name Stability
• - Character Name NOT to be changed
• Identity Stability
• - Identifying characteristic unchanged
• - Glyph / Case Mapping / .
• .

12
Unicode Stages for Acceptance

• Initial Explore Stage
• Chakma / Newari (BMP), Kaithi /Ahom/ Indus
  Valley (P1)
• Proposal in early Committee Recommendation
• Manipuri (BMP), Brahmi (Plane 1)
• Approved Proposal with ISO
• Lepcha /Ol-chiki /Saurashtra (BMP)
• Finalized Encoding Script in Pre Publication
• Code Pages for Limbu / kharosti / Sylot Nagari

13
Tasks

• Convergence State Govts. / Language Commun.
• Active Participation in UNICODE
• Recognized Languages
• Additional Initiatives for
• Other Indic Region Scripts
• E-Governance Applications Unicode complaint
  Indic Scripts