This document discusses Myanmar Unicode and its implementation on operating systems and devices. It provides an overview of Unicode, how Myanmar characters are encoded in Unicode, and the benefits of Unicode for supporting multiple languages and platforms. It also addresses challenges in supporting Myanmar scripts, such as issues with existing fonts like Zawgyi and Ayar, and the need for rendering engines, input methods, and localization to properly display Myanmar on devices.

1. Myanmar Unicode
on OS & Devices
Ngwe Tun, CEO, Solveware Solution.
11-02-2013, Chiang Mai

2. Electronic Devices
Computers
Mobile Phone
EBook Readers
Camera
Audio Players
Networking

3. Strong Will to see Burmese

4. Bad Square

5. Dirty Dotted Circle

6. Unknown Latin Text

7. Myanmar Unicode
Myanmar Character set in
the Unicode Block.
Not only Character points but
also how to implement in
storage.
It covers all ethnics
languages in Myanmar.

8. Languages in Myanmar
BCP 417
Standards for
Languages in
Myanmar.

9. Myanmar Character Set
http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1000.pdf

10. What is Unicode?
Computers deal with numbers
Characters are assigned numbers
Before Unicode, these numbers were
assigned in many different ways;
Encoding, Code-Pages
Code-Point overloading
Data Corruption/No Interchangeable

11. What is Unicode?
Unique number for every character
no matter what the platform
no matter what the program
no matter what the language
Easy to determine what the character is and
which language it is from

12. What is Unicode?
Universal character set
All of the major scripts
Simple and Consistent Manner
Alphabetic, Syllabic & Ideographic
Version 6.1
1,114,112 code points
109,384 characters
fully conformant with the International Standard ISO/IEC
10646:2011

13. ယနူကီဒုသ်ုံးု ရင်ဘာထုံးူမှာာဲ
တင ုုံး်ရငုံး်သာုံးတတွေကနွေပ် ျူတာသုံးု ဲရ ုို့မှယ်
ဘယဲ် ုရု ကရ်မှယ်ဆတု ာ မှာတ်ထာုံးရနမှ်ဲ ု
ရု ကရ်ဲွေယ်မှယ်၊ ရာာရဲွေယမှ်ယ ်
အကခရာစဉ်နင ုမှ်ယ်
ဗမှာစာက ုသတပ် သုတည်ွှနုံး်က က တရုံးနင ုမှ်ယ်

14. Benefit of Unicode
Can be incorporated into
Desktop Apps
Client-Server Apps
Multi-tiered/WebApps
Significant cost savings
Single implementation targeted across:
Multiple Platforms
Multiple Languages, countries
No re-engineering
Data to be transported through many different systems
No data corruption!

15. Where are we Now?
တူညမှီဲုပ်ယူနကီုဒ်
ယနူကီဒုစ် မှငငမှ ်တသုံးပါဘုံးူ
မှ ဘုငု ုံး်ဖုနုံး်တတမှွောာ ရမှာသုံးု မှယ ်
Windowsမှာာ Microsoftက မှထညတ်ို့သုံးဘုံးူ
Photoshop/Pagemaker မှာာသုံးု ဲမှ ုို့ရဘုံးူ
ဲက်ကွေက်အသစ်ဖဖစ်သွောုံးမှာာ ခက်တယ်

16. Zawgyi is not Unicode
Non-standard. We can’t use Ethnic languages with Zawgyi.
Not compatible with Burmese standard fonts from Microsoft, Apple and
Linux community.
Zawgyi is a writing system/font for the Burmese script. It is based on
Unicode technology and there is overlap for many of the characters. The
consequence is that a true Unicode compliant font will see some of the
Zawgyi characters but will fail to see others.
Ref; http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-is-in-name-when-it-cant-
be-read.html

17. Ayar is not Unicode
Unicode is a standard that defines the characters of a script and their
behaviour. As it is a standard, implementing a font for a script and calling it
Unicode means that the specifications have to be followed exactly.
It abuses Unicode by not having the characters in the designated places.
This time it is the Ayar Unicode Group that is the focus of attention. The
Ayar system gets the characters in the right place but there are questions
about the placement of characters that form the syllables. With 12% of
them in the wrong order, this affects around 70% of the words in Myanmar.
Ref; http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/03/drama-that-is-unicode-support-
for.html

18. Localization (L10N)
Process of adapting a product for
a particular Locale : [local custom].
Usually comes after Internationalization : [Process of
creating (or re-engineering)
a system to support multiple locales with a single set of
source code] in the shape of a package of services.

19. Level Of L10N.

20. Requirement of L10N
Fonts (OpenType/AAT)
Rendering/Shaping Engines
Input Methods
Locales
I18N support/Translatable strings
Converters

21. Inside a Myanmar Unicode Font
Opentype accept glyphs in TrueType or
Type1.
Maps character code to glyph. For
Myanmar scripts nos. of glyph requires
are more than nos. of characters
defined.
GSUB Table provide substitution
information
e.g. မှာမှျှ မှွှဖမှြှဖမှြွှ
GPOS Table provide positioning
information
e.g. မှ ို့မှ ုို့ငမှ ြို့

22. Rendering/Shaping Engine

23. Complex Rendering/Shaping Engine
Contextual Shape
e.g. ဖခ ကက
Reordering
e.g. တကက စင်္ကြန်
Positioning
e.g. သတတ မှနတတဲုံး

24. Why Square and Dotted Circle
Rendering/Shaping Engine not being supported
Burmese in Display
Not configure well according to System
Font do not have set of complex text rendering rules.
Finally, check your bias enforcement in current
system setting

25. Input Methods
Operating System will support storage oriented
method. ဖျ တျျာျ်=တဖ ာ်
Keymagic is Free/Open Source Input Method
Software and being supported any keyboard layout
in Windows/Linux/Mac. Even in iPad.
http://keymagic.net
Standards Layout is MyanSan which is available in
Keyman software by Myanmar NLP Lab.

26. MyanSan @ ဖမှနစ်
http://www.myanmarnlp.org.mm/keyboard

27. Locales
a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country
and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see
in their user interface.
my-MM; http://unicode.org/cldr-apps/survey?_=my
Windows Vista & 7 တွေင်တ ုငုံး်ရငုံး်သာုံး ဘာသာစကာုံးမှ ာုံးနငာ်ို့
သက်ဆငု ရ်ာ နင ုင်မှ ာုံး အတွေက်စအ ဖဖငအ်ို့သုံးု ဖပ တသာ ဂဏနုံး်မှ ာုံး၊ တငွေ
တကကုံး သတကြတ၊ အခ နန်ငာ်ို့သက်ဆငု တ်သာ နစာ၊်ဲ၊ ရက်မှ ာုံး သတ်မှတာ်ပ ု
တ ုကို့ ုမှ မှ စတ ်င်္က က်တဖပာငုံး်ဲ သုံးု စနွေ င ု်ပါသည ်ထက ု သို့ု တို့ဖပာငုံး်ဲ သုံးု စွေ
သညအ်ို့ခ က်အဲက်မှ ာုံး အာုံးဲ ုုံး မှတာ်သာုံးထာုံးတသာ စသ တ်မှတာ်ခ က်
စနစ် က ုLocale ဟုတခေါ် ပါ သည်

28. Converters
Desktop Software
Browser Plugin
Files Renaming
Web sites

29. Unicode is not
technologies
font
bad guys
It is practice. productive practice.
Without Unicode, It is dark and uncomputable
such as searching, matching, sorting and naming.

30. Devices can’t display Burmese
Vendor do not support Burmese.
Technologies are not ready
Configuration might be wrong.
But Unicode Standards is ready for any devices.
letting you know every devices can’t display
burmese well because shaping will not have
burmese support.

31. *တကာငုံး်တာထက်မှနာတ်ာက
အငမှ တမှ်ုံးသာပါတယ် *
တက ုံးဇူုံးတငစ်ာွေဖဖင.်ို့..