Friday, May 24, 2013

First Contact with Unicode Consortium about Shan Unicode and the Response

Dear Magda Danish, (Dated : 25 June 2007)

Subject :              : The matter of Shan Unicode in the Union of Burma
Last 13 June 2007, I called the Unicode Consortium and talked with you about Unicode.  I have been discussing the issues with my web and media colleagues and have some comments regarding the ' Shan Unicode', as follows:-

The Shan Unicode
I have now attached two files with regard to the Shan Unicode. These two files are sent as CC by Voice Chairman of Shan Cultural and Literature Committee in Mandalay, Myanmar, to Shan Scholars in Shan literature and organizations concerned. To our knowledge as Shan ourselves, we have observed that " Myanmar Unicode and Natural Language Processing Research Centre" is trying to propose for the existence of Shan Unicode as additions to the Burmese Unicode, which will not be appropriate without the notice or participation of the Shan Scholars expert in Shan Literature. Therefore, we believe that only the Shan Scholars in the research about Shan and Shan Literature themselves are suitable to undertake this task of fulfilling the need for the Shan Unicode.


The Shan / Tai
Shan is a people who indentify themselves as Tai. So it's a branch of the Tai families, the ethnic group in Southeast Asia. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shan)
Two ethnic groups in China that use New Tai Lue  and Tai Le Unicode scripts belong to the same Tai families and share common languages, culture and tradition. As these ethnic groups in China, the Shan, an ethnic group in Burma also know their own language, culture and tradition better those outside of the community.

This email has been sent to you now as an introduction to the matter of the Shan Unicode which is considered to be encoded at the Unicode Consortium. But so far it has been proposed by "Myanmar Unicode and Natural Language Processing Research Centre " which is a non-Shan organization with just the research experience and not with the real experience in their day to day life like the Shan Scholars and Shan people themselves.

As task to be proposed by Shan Scholars
Therefore, we would like the Unicode Consortium to consider this as the task to be proposed by the Shan Scholars themselves so that suitable scripts used by the Shan people in Burma will properly be encoded. Currently Shan Scholars expert in Shan literature are discussing among themselves for this purpose. Please don't hesitate to advice or give suggestions to us on this. And could you please provide us specific information on procedure and guideline to get the scripts encoded? We do believe that the existence of Shan Unicode will benefit the Shan people in many ways either when it is used in programming languages or word processing matters.

Thanking you,
Khwaan Tai

 

Dear Khwaan Tai, (Dated : 26 June 2007)

Your email has been forwarded to the Unicode officers and the Unicode editorial committee who will decide if it should be entered as an L2 document to be discussed at the next Unicode Technical Committee meeting in August 2007.
Please be advised that the time to make any changes to the Shan repertoire additions is growing very short as the August UTC is the last chance for UTC input and the September WG2 the last chance for any change.

It is the Unicode editorial committee's recommendation that if there is a technical issue with the Shan additions currently under ballot, that the most expeditious course of action would be for you to talk directly to Michael Everson:
eversonATevertype.com and Martin Hoskin: martin_hoskenATsil.org, both cc'ed on this reply.

I hope this information is helpful.

Regards,

---------------------------
Magda Danish
Sr. Administrative Director

The Unicode Consortium

650-693-....

magdaATunicode.org




Dear Magda Danish, (Dated : 26 June 2007)
Thanks a lot for your information which indeed is very helpful for us. We will discuss the Shan Unicode issue before August UTC (and September WG2) and get back to Michael Everson and Martin Hoskin.

Best,
Khwaan Tai



This is an email to Tai individual, elders and some organizations (Dated: 26 June 2007)

Dear all,
I now forward a replied email to the one I sent to Unicode Consortium about Shan Unicode. Please see the exchanged emails for details. What I will like to express here in brief is that a non-Shan Organization is undertaking the task of proposing the Shan scripts to be encoded at Unicode Consortium. In fact this should be undertaken by Shan scholars, font designers and programmers etc. themselves because these can affect the future programming or computing technology for Shan people.
Today I talked with Sai Murng Zuen (sanloitai http://www.sanloitai.com) and we thought of several options with regard to this. He will be putting this issue in SSOP for further discussion on how to prevent the process of the Shan scripts being encoded as additions to the Myanmar Unicode just with the proposal of a non-Shan Organization. The time is running very short as Magda Danish, Sr. Administrative Director of Unicode Consortium, says.

When I sent my email to the Unicode Consortium, I cc’ed it to several persons participating in SSOP. With this forwarded email, now all can have a review of the process and can take further steps for discussion together. Please feel free to discuss, advice and help find the solution to this.
We do thank Sai Di Di Zone, the Voice Chairman of Shan Cultural and Literature Committee in Mandalay, to have done some considerable research on this.

Best,
Khwaan Tai
(webmaster)

No comments: