Re: Request for egistration of character set TSCII for TAMIL language

[Ned Freed <ned.freed@mrochek.com>]

> [I prepared this yesterday, but it didn't get out because
> my Win box was suddenly getting slower and slower and I had
> to restart. My comments seem to be more or less parallel
> to what Ned wrote.]

> Hello Kuppuswamy,

> I'm extremely sorry that I haven't replied to you earlier.
> There are two reasons for this: I have been extremely busy during
> the term here at the University, and the mailing list archive
> (at http://mail.apps.ietf.org/ietf/charsets/maillist.html)
> wasn't accessible for a long time.

Please let me know if/when this happens.

> It is now accessible, but
> strangely enough doesn't contain your messages.

There seems to be a problem with the iana.org forwarder - some messages aren't
making it through. (But plenty of spam is, unfortunately.)

> Ned, can you check? THANKS!
> (one message came back today saying that the posting limit
> is too low, so the ppt attachment didn't make it through.)

I don't impose such restrictions on the list at this end.

> Looking at your submission, it looks very good in terms of
> all the data and documentation available. The main problem
> is that the data isn't grouped the way we would expect it.
> You sent in a .pdf file as the main registration document.
> However, the main registration document should be in ASCII
> only. So the main thing to do is to take some of the information
> from the .pdf document, maybe with some other information
> (e.g. correspondence table to Unicode) and put the ASCII
> part of it directly in the registration itself.

The approach I suggested in private email was to have a reference from the
ASCII version to the PDF version somewhere else - either on the IANA site if
IANA is willing to put up a PDF, or somewhere else if they aren't.

> Anything else (e.g. code chart, glyph tables,...), in particular
> things that obviously cannot be put into ASCII, should remain
> in .pdf (or a simliar form), but should not be entitled
> "Draft Proposal for formal registration of TSCII..." or
> anything similar. It's just a document describing the encoding.

> Some more detailled comments below.


> At 16:16 07/01/15, K Kalyanasundaram wrote:

> >To:
> >ietf-charsets@iana.org
> >
> >Subject:
> >Registration of new language charset for Tamil
> >
> >Character set name:
> >TSCII
> >(TAMIL SCRIPT CODE FOR INFORMATION INTERCHANGE)
> >
> >Character set aliases:
> >None
> >
> >Suitability for use in MIME text:
> >YES

> maybe add: As 8bit or with base64 or quoted-printable encoding

> >Published Specifications:
> >    www.tscii.org/tsciispec.html
> >
> >ISO 10646 Equivalency Table (available at Unicode consortium website):
> >   http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn15/

> Other registrations (see e.g.
> http://mail.apps.ietf.org/ietf/charsets/msg01739.html)
> have included this. In your case, the mapping is more
> complex, so maybe including it is not such a good idea,
> but probably adding something like "please note that not
> all codepoints can be converted one-to-one" or so
> would help.

I made the same suggestion.

> >Intended usage:
> >COMMON
> >
> >Additional Information:

> The intent of this section, as I understand it, is mostly
> for implementers. But your text reads more like a pamphlet
> trying to convince us to register. If necessary (I'm already
> convinced, so I don't think it's necessary), such arguments
> can be given on this mailing list.

Agreed.

> >Tamil is one of the main Indian languages (Dravidian in Origin)
> >currently spoken by over 70 million people worldwide. TSCII
> >(Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange) is a bilingual 8-bit
> >glyph-based encoding scheme (Roman and Tamil) to deal with
> >Tamil materials on computers and for Information Interchange
> >across platforms using different protocols and document formats.
> >
> >The TSCII scheme was collectively worked out through Net-based
> >discussions in 1998. TSCII is modelled on the ISO-8859-XX scheme
> >with standard plain ASCII set filling the 7-bit part and a set of Tamil

I'd prefer this to say "ISO-8859-XX charsets" rather than "ISO-8859-XX scheme".
There's more to the structure of the iso-8859-n family of CCSes than the
7-is-ascii/8-is-something-else split.

> >character glyphs filling the 8-bit part.
> >
> >The TSCII scheme has been widely in use for over 5 years in all three
> >popular computer platforms (Windows, Macintosh and Unix/Linux).
> >In addition to millions of home-users (particularly in India,
> >Singapore,
> >Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Western Europe and North America), TSCII
> >encoding is used widely in Net-based mailing lists, newspapers
> >and ezines on-line, digital library etc. Legacy data in TSCII format
> >generated during the last 5 years is quite substantial and is growing
> >constantly.
> >
> >TSCII as an established language encoding is already recognized
> >by major IT players like the Unicode Consortium, Microsoft, Apple,
> >Oracle and Sun Microsystems. With OS-level support for Tamil in
> >Microsoft Windows 2000 and later OS releases and very recently in
> >Apple痴 Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) release, Tamil Diaspora has started to
> >use Unicode already. The Purpose of this formal registration with IETF
> >is to facilitate migration of the vast amounts of legacy data in TSCII
> >and
> >multitude of users.
> >
> >Person(s) & email address to contact for further information:

> In general, the idea is to have a small number of
> people, but with more address information. Please
> see other examples. The contact information is not
> there to show that the proposal has wide support, but
> to list somebody who can be contacted in cases of questions.

Seems reasonable to me.

> Regards,    Martin.

> >TSCII USER GROUP represented by
> >
> >      Kalyanasundaram, Kuppuswamy (Switzerland)
> >      kalyan.geo@yahoo.com
> >
> >      Manivannan, Mani (USA)
> >      mmanivannan@gmail.com
> >
> >      Nedumaran, Muthu (Malaysia)
> >      muthu@murasu.com
> >
> >      Kaviarasan, S (USA)
> >      kaviarasan@yahoo.com
> >
> >      Paul, Ravindran K (Malaysia)
> >      ravi@thunaivan.com
> >
> >      Doddannan, Sivaraj (India)
> >      sivaraj@theni.net
> >
> >      RM. Krishnan (India)
> >      poo@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in
> >
> >      Kumar Mallikarjunan (USA)
> >      kumar@exchange.vt.edu
> >
> >      Sinnathurai Srivas (UK)
> >      SiSrivas@hotmail.com
> >


> #-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
> #-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp      mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp