RE: Request for registration of character set TSCII for TAMIL language

[Shawn Steele <Shawn.Steele@microsoft.com>]

Thanks,

Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: K Kalyanasundaram [mailto:kalyan.geo@yahoo.com] 
Sent: Poʻakolu, Pepeluali 28, 2007 12:10 AM
To: Michael Yau; ietf-charsets@iana.org; Shawn Steele
Cc: Mani Manivannan
Subject: Re: Request for registration of character set TSCII for TAMIL language

Dear Shawn Steele and Michael Yau:

Many of us have been associated with a global Organization devoted 
to Tamil IT called INFITT ("International Forum for Information
Technology 
in Tamil"). INFITT organizes Tamil Internet Conferences in different
parts 
of the world. This is an annual gathering of hardware & software
professionals 
working in Tamil IT development.  Representatives of many IT MNCs 
(Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Oracle, IBM,.. ) have participated in these
conferences 
where TSCII and other 8-bit bilingual encodings are extensively
discussed, 
in particular migration of data from these legacy encodings to Unicode.

Papers presented in these TICs are available online at the INFITT
website
<www.infitt.org>. INFITT has a formal liason relationship with Unicode 
Consortium, helping the UTC in the context of Tamil Unicode Block. 

Steele has summarized correctly the present situation - many  IT MNCs
are "aware" of the existence of TSCII encoding for Tamil, but there is 
no direct support at the OS level. It is well known that MNCs do not
provide 
direct support for 3rd party encodings that are not formally
registered. 

Few years back we contacted Unicode Consortium to include a TSCII-
Unicode mapping table, mainly to aid migration of TSCII  users to
multilingual 
Unicode. IBM, for example, has recognized the need for such mapping 
table to help migration:
 
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/migratingdata/charactermap.jsp

Present initiative for a formal registration of TSCII is in the same
spirit- help 
migration of users and legacy data to Unicode. It will be very helpful
for software 
developers  to provide migration support if  popular (hacked?)
encodings 
such as TSCII  are formally registered with IETF/IANA.

In conclusion I want to state, in the plain ASCII version of TSCII
registration
request, we have condensed heavily the general introductory part and 
removed all references to the knowledge or awareness of TSCII amongst
IT MNCs. 

with best regards
K. Kalyanasundaram


--- Michael Yau <michael.yau@oracle.com> wrote:

> Oracle does not support (recognize) TSCII, but supports Tamil script
> as  encoded in Unicode.
> 
> Michael Yau
> Server Globalization Technology
> Oracle Corporation
> 
> Shawn Steele wrote:
> 
> >I'm encouraged that this draft is being submitted to aid the
> migration of Tamil data to Unicode.
> >
> >To clarify my earlier message, my concern is with the implication of
> this language:
> >
> >  
> >
> >>>TSCII as an established language encoding is already recognized by
> 
> >>>major IT players like the Unicode Consortium, Microsoft, Apple, 
> >>>Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
> >>>      
> >>>
> >
> >Microsoft does not recognize TSCII.  We know it exists, but that's
> about it.
> >
> >Other participants in the Unicode Consortium can speak to their
> products, but this sentence implies that Microsoft products would
> understand TSCII.  Since Outlook, Vista, etc. do not natively
> understand TSCII this could confuse our users.
> > 
> >I don't object to the registration of TSCII, I'd just like this
> reference that implies Microsoft recognizes TSCII to be removed.
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >- Shawn
> >
> >
> >  
> >
>