[Indic-computing-users] Note... from Cambodia... language that grew from Devanagari

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

o Norbert Klein <nh...@gm...> says about Cambodia: "I do not have
anything to offer (yet), but our e-mail system (the first connection to the
Internet from Cambodia set up by me in 1994 (on a DOS/UNIX dial-up program)
runs on SuSE Linux since 1996. I am a member of the Cambodian government
sponsored national working group on Khmer/UNICODE - after quite some
struggle we have an agreement with UNICODE, and maybe early next year we
will have a Khmer implementation in Windows XP.

"But I am trying to look beyond, to a Linux implementation too. - The Khmer
script was developed almost 1000 years ago from Devanagiri - but it has some
very specific structural differences developed in the meantime - some people
who are linguists say the script has no more similarity with the way Tibetan
developed (with subscripts which are NOT just variations of the
non-subscripted forms).

"The problem is, of course, not just to have the glyphs, but to have an
'intelligent' input and display engine which puts the many different glyph
parts together...

"(PS: our web site is somewhat in disarray - but it is the first HTML web
site in Khmer, which automatically downloads the Khmer MS Windows fonts
family we use. There are at least 23 different, non compatible MS Windows
fonts families - we have also a file conversion program to read another font
system, if you have one on your computer. A total mess as a result of a
"nobody cooperates with nobody" attitude, and everybody thinks "my system is
best.")"

-- 
Norbert Klein
Open Forum of Cambodia: www.forum.org.kh