[Indic-computing-users] Unicode....

[Frederick N. (FN) <fr...@by...>]

FOR THE WORLD'S A B C'S, HE MAKES 1'S AND 0'S
For the last 10 years, typographer Michael Everson has been instrumental in
developing Unicode, an international standard for character encoding.
Unicode takes the individual letters and symbols in a language and converts
them into strings of 0's and 1's that can be read by computers. Because of
Unicode, "you can plunk down a vanilla off-the-shelf computer into a cafe
anywhere in the world and have any user in any language walk up to it and
use it for accessing the Web," said Rick McGowan of the Unicode Consortium.
Currently, Unicode Version 4.0 contains some 96,000 letters and symbols, of
which approximately 70,000 of them are Chinese characters. Unicode supports
54 other writing systems, from Mongolian to Thai to Gothic to Cyrillic.
However, Mr. Everson is haunted by the prospect that Unicode may never be
finished, as nearly 100 writing systems remain to be encoded. Now that the
writing systems of the major computer markets are encoded, it may be more
difficult to find continued funding for the project.
SOURCE: New York Times; AUTHOR: Michael Erard
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/technology/circuits/25code.html?ex=1065515
099&ei=1&en=a6d4162588c819d9

Source:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(c) Benton Foundation 2003. Redistribution of this Internet publication --
both internally and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this message.

Communications-Related Headlines is a free news service posted Monday
through Friday by the Benton Foundation (http://www.benton.org). This
service will keep you up-to-date on important developments and policy issues
in communications, the Internet, edtech, community technology, journalism,
public media, regulation and philanthropy. Headlines are compiled,
summarized and edited by Andy Carvin (ac...@be...), Jennifer Hill
(jh...@be...) and Shani Smothers (sh...@be...) -- we welcome your
feedback.

Based in Washington DC, the Benton Foundation's mission is to articulate a
public interest vision for the digital age and demonstrate the value of
communications for solving social problems. Projects at Benton include:

        The Digital Divide Network (www.digitaldividenetwork.org)
        Digital Opportunity Channel (www.digitalopportunity.org)
        E-Government for All (www.egov4all.org)
        Media Ownership (www.benton.org/initiatives/ownership.html)
        OneWorld United States (us.oneworld.net)
        Sound Partners for Community Health (www.soundpartners.org)

To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or view the Headlines
Archive, please visit

http://owa.benton.org/archives/benton-compolicy.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------