[Indic-computing-standards] Tamil Unicode

[Rajesh G. <gan...@ho...>]

Dear LinuxLingam & Other Tamil Lovers,
This is in response to Mr. LinuxLingam's query. Tamil Nadu Government (TNG) 
is certainly part of Unicode Consortium, but through INternational Forum of 
Information Technology in Tamil (INFITT). They coordinate all the 
activities of Tamil Computing by the TNG. TNG does not seem to be serious 
about Unicode now because most of the present OSs are not capable of 
handling it. In fact, TNG does not seem to recognize ISCII, which is our 
National Standard and also, on which Unicode is based upon!
As some body commented, it is true that the TSCII encoding is popular among 
Tamils - especially Tamil Diaspora. Mainland Tamilians follow the TNG's TAB 
& TAM encoding. Interestingly, both the encodings are hacked encodings - 
that is, they are modified versions of iso8859-1 or 2. So, there is a 
remote possibility of they being included officially in OSs - except in 
FLOSS, where we do them on our own interest.
All these situations are temporary, till Unicode is usable in all OSs. 
AFAIK, Win2k-series & Gnome support unicode now and Mac & KDE will, soon.
To summarize, if we create a software for mainland use, support TAB 
(online) or TAM (DTP, etc). If we create for overseas use, support TSCII. 
Oh, we need national recognition - then support ISCII too. Alas, if you 
want it to stand the test of time, go for Unicode ;-)
BTW, I came to know that iso8859-12 is alloted to Indic scripts (probably 
ISCII). Does anyone know the present position thereof?
Regards,
Rajesh

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