L2/06-218

From: chitrajakumar@rachanamalayalam.org
Date: 2006-05-19 00:48:49 -0700
Subject: Malayalam Chillu Encoding


Dear Rick McGowan,

This is to invite immediate attention of the UTC authorities regarding the
Malayalam script. We had received an unexpected comment on the
unicode-indic mailing list from Micheal Everson mentioning that "... the
Script Subcommittee recommended that the explicit chillu letters be added
to the standard."

As you know, the issue of chillu is under serious debate and many
documents have been exchanged as well. On the basis of the documents the
decision on whether to encode chillu was deferred to achieving a consensus
in Kerala between the various parties of the discussion.

As mentioned by us, we are deeply involved in achieving this consensus,
and we have been having discussions in this regard with the various
parties in government, academia, etc. In our email, sent a few days ago to
the unicode-indic mailing list, we had mentioned in detail the current
obstacles we are facing in holding the conference. The same was discussed
also with Eric Muller and Dr. Umamaheswaran in emails sent to them.

We have lodged some representation before the concerned government
department as well. Officials are of the opinion that the new government
will take a policy decision in this important issue. Yesterday the new
government was sworn in and we are in the impression that a committee
comprising of renowned language scholars and IT experts will be deputed to
resolve this problem logically without any prejudice.

In the national eGovernance workshop conducted by National Informatics
Centre, Kerala State IT Mission and Computer Society of India, at
Trivandrum on 16/17th of this month, this problem was brought up for
discussion in the language/localization track. It was ultimately decided
that a working group should be formed to go through the problems of
malayalam encoding, including chillu.

It is our strong opinion that, no substantial arguments have been raised
why chillu should be encoded. On the other hand, there has been only idle
speculation on the mailing list and in other places. For e.g., one person
states that there are above 20 chillaksharams in Malayalam!

The problem is that the none of the points put forward by us in the
documents submitted to UTC have been countered. We have not received any
effective feedback on these documents from anyone.

In fact, the majority of the language scholars and IT experts, who are all
capable of providing excellent review of the issues, are not even aware of
these goings-on in the UTC. We are trying to bring all these issues to
their attention.

On the basis of this, we insist that these documents and the major issues
have to be discussed here in Kerala and a consensus arrived at before UTC
should take a final decision.

Even though the situation is like this, we hope that UTC will not
unilaterally take a decision on this important issue, and we strongly
suggest that Malayalees who are capable of generating informed opinion
should be given the opportunity to achieve a consensus on this matter.

Rachana Aksharavedi has taken an initiative in not only the chillu
discussions but also in participating in all the relevant matters of
Malayalam through our documents. As you know we have also contributed in
the encoding of some important characters in Unicode. We remind UTC that
all of these efforts are purely with an academic interest.

Certainly, this is not an issue in which a closed or hasty decision should
be taken. It is a question involving the basic identity of Malayalam
script and its inner logic. The future of Malayalam computing has Unicode
at its foundation and a hasty decision at this point may jeopardize it.

Regards,
R. Chitrajakumar
Rachana Aksharavedi