good news for Mon Unicode

ပရိုင် ခိုဟ် သွက် သင်ေကတ ဂၠး ကဝ် ဘာသာ မန် Mon Unicode

ယွံ ကေလာ ေကာ ေဒအ် ဂကူမန် ညး မ ဆာန် လိက် ပတ် မန် တအ် ညး ဂံလိုင် အဴ! လမုဟ် သင်ေကတ ဂၠးကဝ် unicode 5.1 ညးတအ် ကုဵသံတီ ပတိတ် တရး ပဍဲ သကရာဇ် ၂၀၀၈ ကညင် ေတအ် ေရာင်၊၊ ေအာဝ် ြပာပ် စိုပ် အာ ဗဟ် ပဍဲ မုက် လိက် သၟဝ် ေတအ် အိုတ်ညိ! မုက်လိက် ဝွံ ဒဟ် ဘာသာ ေအင်ကလိက် တုဲ လက် ကရဴ ဂွံ အခိင် မဂး ကေလင် ကၠာဲ ပတိတ် ဘာသာ မန် ေရာင်! ကုဵ ဂွံ ဒဟ် တသိုက် စိုတ် ကာယ ၜါ ြပကာ အိုတ် ညိ!
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/

The Myanmar script and Unicode

June 3rd, 2007 by Andrew Cunningham

I've been looking into Unicode support for the Myanmar Script. A few local projects require Unicode support for Myanmar (Burmese), Mon and S'gaw Karen. The existing Unicode Myanmar block only supports Myanmar (Burmese). Unicode 5.1 will make changes to the existing Myanmar block and add additional characters for Mon and S'gaw Karen. Proposals have been submitted to add additional characters to support other ethnic minority languages of the Myanmar Union.

The following notes attempt to summarize current status of Unicode support for the Myanmar script.

Existing implementations can be divided into three groups:

1. Pseudo-Unicode solutions
   
2. Unicode 4/5 solutions
   
3. Unicode 5.1 solutions
   

Font solutions

Pseudo-Unicode solutions

Early non 8-bit font solutions used the Unicode Myanmar block as a starting point. These fonts do not use advanced OpenType, AAT or Graphite rendering technologies. In order to correctly display Myanmar text additional glyphs were added to empty positions in the Myanmar block or to the Unicode PUA. Essentially old 8-bit legacy font solutions are being used with a minimum Unicode repertoire.

Some pseudo-Unicode fonts include: Mandalay, MyaZedi, PonNya_Web and UniBurma.

These fonts are not Unicode compliant.

When creating documents or web pages using pseudo-Unicode font solutions you are tying your document to fonts from a single font developer. The document will not work correctly with Unicode compliant fonts or applications.

Unicode 4/5 solutions

A small number of Graphite and OpenType fonts have been developed with full Unicode support based on the Myanmar block in Unicode Version 4 and Version 5. Unicode Technical Note 11 discusses how to encode Myanmar text and provides solutions to a number of issues with the Myanmar encoding model.

Unicode 4/5 compatible fonts include: Padauk 1.1 (Graphite) and Myanmar1 (OpenType).

Unicode 4/5 based fonts only support the Myanmar (Burmese) language. They can not support other languages of the Myanmar Union that use the Myanmar script. These fonts are not compatible with the Myanmar block that will be published in Unicode 5.1. Text written that utilizes Unicode 4/5 font solutions will need to be converted to use with applications and fonts that use the newer Unicode 5.1 solution.

Unicode 5.1 solutions

Unicode 5.1 will introduce a fundamental changes to the Myanmar block and will enable ethnic minority language support. A second version of Unicode Technical Note 11 has been published and is based on the Unicode 5.1 Myanmar block.

Additional characters required for Mon and S'gaw Karen will be included. Already a number of Myanmar developers are standardizing on Unicode 5.1.

Existing fonts that are based on the proposed changes in Unicode 5.1 include: Parabaik Sans (OpenType), Padauk 2.0 (Graphite), PadaukOT 2.1.2 (OpenType and Graphite) and Myanmar2 (OpenType).

These fonts currently support Myanmar (Burmese). Updated versions of Padauk and PadaukOT are under development.

Conclusion

A tool for converting between different Myanmar encodings is available at http://www.thanlwinsoft.org/ThanLwinSoft/DocCharConvert/.

Our internal projects will standardize on Unicode 5.1 based font solutions. This will enable us to support Myanmar (Burmese) and when updated fonts become available we can add Mon and S'gaw Karen support.

If we used the Unicode 4/5 solutions, our documents and databases would need to be converted when we introduce Mon and S'gaw Karen web services.

An important consideration is that in the future new web services and tools will be based on Unicode 5.1.

http://blogs.openroad.net.au/2007/06/03/the-myanmar-script-and-unicode/
http://www.myanmarnlpteam.blogspot.com/
http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn11/myanmar_uni-v2.pdf