From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Wed Mar 22 2006 - 05:29:30 CST
From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
> The fact that no one in Myanmar has released a Unicode implementation
> is fortunate really... there really isn't all that much *Unicode*
> legacy data out there (almost all Burmese text is still represented
> in a plethora of 8-bit solutions).
The severe political context in Myanmar may explain such situation, but I doubt that there's no burmese people that fled outside of Myanmar (or live since generations outside of Burma) but know their own language and script and want to keep its culture active in their host country.
The situation should then be comparable to the Tibetan script, even if Tibet is occupied by China since a half of century, or if the Dzongkha language that uses that script also suffers from political difficulties in Bhutan. Tibetan seems to have been more active only due to the international respect of its culture throughout Asia, notably in India, and the influence of its leading representant.
It looks like that Myanmar does not really want a large set of independant authors, and restricts so much their activities that this does not give the chanceto respectable authors to get access to the Internet technology that would help developing this script. May be the so-called "Myanmar" script should be supported by a group of other surrounding countries and private organisations like SIL that seek to preserve the cultural inheritage.
And there are certainly good asian linguistic departments throughout the world that have kept insteresting and respectable resources about the Burmese language and its script. So why not contacting the countries surrounding Myanmar to create a working group outside this country, and leave a door open to the Myanmar goveernement to join this independant initiative?
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