Letter No

From
Thiru T.K.Ramachandran, IAS.,
Principal Secretary to Government.
Information Technology Department,
Secretariat, Chennai,
Government of Tamil Nadu,
India

Ms. Lisa Moore

Chair, Unicode Technical Committee

Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, The Unicode Consortium

P.O. Box No.391476

Mountain view, CA 94039-1476

USA.

lisam@us.ibm.com

lisa@unicode.org

Madam,

Sub:	Recommendations on Tamil Fractions and special symbols in Unicode – Postponement of decision in Unicode Technical Committee – Requested.
Ref:	1. Government letter No.1766/eGov I/2015, dated 6.5.2015 2. Your email dated 07.5.2015.

***

I am to invite a reference to your email dated 7^th May 2015, regarding TAMIL and TAMIL SUPPLEMENT (proposed) Code Charts L2/15-078 presently circulating with the user communities for comments viz. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15078-tamil.pdfand http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15079-tamil-name-chg.pdf. We also understand that these proposals have reached the near final stage of the Unicode Approval Process and are waiting for balloting.

2. In this connection, I am to state that Dr.Sriramana Sharma had earlier proposed codes for 55 glyphs relating to old Tamil fractions and symbols. Recently considering their importance and the need to institute symbols with suitability, shape-appropriateness, content and annotations, well-known Epigraphists, Archeologists, Experts dealing with old manuscripts, Experts having knowledge about traditional accounting records etc were invited to look at these symbols and offer their comments through a series of meetings held over the last couple of months in Madras University, Chennai.

3. The experts have been requested to provide us with concrete inscriptional evidence and supports for their comments. The experts need some time to collect these evidences and organize them through a document for submission. In these circumstances, it appears that the whole effort may take more than 6 months to complete. We may have to decide on the suitable course of action after receiving the comments from the experts.

4. Therefore, we request the Unicode Technical Committee not to proceed with balloting at present but maintain status quo ante onto the level at which the proposal has progressed till now. We also request Unicode Technical Committee to take up the matter with ISO as may be required.

Yours faithfully,

for Principal Secretary to Government.

Copy to:-

Smt Swaran Lata

Director and HOD (TDIL)

Ministry of Communication and Information Technology,

New Delhi -110 003