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Date/Time: Thu Oct 23 13:28:01 CDT 2014
Contact: adrian_cheuk@sil.org
Name: Adrian Cheuk
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: PRI #281: Proposed encoding model change for New Tai Lue
Having been in contact with the New Tai Lue user community for 8 years, we can confirm that the local situation described in the background document is true: they have not been using 'true' Unicode solution in data processing. Local users have always been typing & storing characters visually, i.e., the 4 reordering vowels are typed & stored before the initial consonant. Each character has the same weight, be it consonant, vowel, or tone, & is processed as a full character (i.e., not a combining mark). In the past, legacy encodings in visual order were used. When we visited the language area in 2011, we discovered the local newspaper co. had already switched to a pseudo- Unicode solution that encoded characters using Unicode code points but stored data in visual order. Their website www.dw12.com has since been actively disseminating daily news in this way to this day. Subsequently we did extensive testing on platforms & data processing software available to us in the hope of finding a 'true' Unicode solution for the user community. However, none of the applications tested was able to support NTL in a workable manner. E.g., Windows XP had no NTL support; Windows 7 only had the font but no IME, & Word 2010 on Win7 turned a run of text into overlapping characters during editing; OpenOffice 3.2/LibreOffice 3.3 forbade cursor placement before a vowel or tone, & an initial cannot be deleted w/o deleting also the vowel & the tone in the syllable. The requirement to encode reordering characters logically had created so complicated a technical problem that 7 years after acceptance into Unicode there was still no functional application support for the script. So in 2012 we contacted Peter Constable requesting an encoding model change to visual order, explaining also Word 2010/Win7's broken NTL support. After further investigating the anomaly in OOo/LibO, we contacted Martin Hosken in 2013 suggesting the proposed character property change as well as a change to visual encoding order. We are glad that Martin has prepared the background document & that UTC has published this PRI. Given the substantial amount of data already encoded in Unicode code points but stored in visual order, the proposed changes will definitely be welcomed by the user community. They will not need to change anything but can continue to enjoy the simple encoding model which they have long been using. As for existing Unicode-compliant data & implementations, we are only aware of the Dai Banna SIL font package, which contains 2 Unicode font families & a 2-paragraph sample text in Unicode. SIL is willing to revise the package per the proposed changes. We would therefore recommend UTC to adopt the proposed changes as early as possible.