2008/7/27 Kyaw Tun
<kyawtuns@gmail.com>
On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 8:23 AM, Andrew Cunningham
<lang.support@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all
as a rule cybercafes tend to be responsive to users.
If enough users ask for Unicode 5.1 support, and there are enough Unicode 5.1 sites, then cybercafes will support it.
Theoretically that is true. But I have got to explain a bit here more.
Reality is different. People love Zawgyi (non-gov) over Unicode 5.1 (gov). People don't know usefulness of Unicode 5.1, but just know it does't look good. Frankly I don't think people will install Unicode 5.1 font, unless there is a change of image.
although i do hope to get Burmese line-breaking into Firefox and other applications, once that starts to happen I suspect that the Zawgyi font will start to break in websites. Zawgyi is incompatible with the Unicode approach to Burmese, and as soon as more sophisticated support evloves I suspect that we'll start to see problems with Zawgyi.
strange most of the Unicode 5.1 development work I've seen has had nothing to do with the government.
basically there seems to be an education and information aspect to Unicode 5.1 that seems to be missing at present.
Burmese locale support is Unicode 5.1 based. Line breaking and collation routines that ake their way into major applications will be Uniocde 5/1 based, etc.
The question is how you facilitate the uptake rather than encouraging people not to migrate.
Unicode transition is a long plan. It is just not possible immediate transition as
my.wikipedia.org doing.
Partly I'd agree to that point, but I'd argue that it would be bettter to put the effort into assisting and speeding up the transition. If that makes sense?
I am very disappointment that Mr Jimbo Wales and Mr Micheal Everson think that people will migrate to 5.1 just by tell them 5.1 is better then Zawgyi.
People will not imgrate to 5.1 just because of 5.1 is better. People need trust and love.
So my question is, what is the Burmese developer community doing to instill that trust? At the moment the developer community (who should be taking the lead) is divided.
It would appear to me that if the Burmese community isn't ready for Unicode 5.1 then they aren't ready for Unicode based services such as Wikipedia either?
One of my concerns is that if developers block the uptake of Unicode 5.1 it will set back the development of minority languages, unless Burmese is by passed and all the advances occur within minority langauges rather than Burmese?
Andrew