Comments received

My Observations

This is fantastic !!! We are looking forward to more pressure of this type.

Thanks

I have different vision for web site design, much more concern about design lay out, but if U can add my suggestions, this web site will be good information site.

Thanks

OOps! Now u have learnt everything about websites and uploading, etc. You will put "e-chandi part" to "xxxx" n the gang now.

mmmmm

very nice, but very mistaken... makes me wonder now if it is also 'purposely misleading'

Who and Why? Truth is exposed to the world!!!

What a neat and nicely laid out website. I recognised much of the information on it of course. It is nice to see it so neatly presented and so easy to access.

Thanks

Thanks for putting my cartoons in your website. It's a nice feeling! (and I'm flooded with jobs!).

getting results ah!! Statics show very high hit rate for the cartoon page!

Now I understand somewhat. I went into the website akuru.org.So why is the authorities not accepting what you are trying to establish??What is the problem??? Who needs money??? Don’t they have common sense??? Why are they soft pedalling your effort

Govt of Sri Lanka do have World Bank funds to develop ICT in Sri Lanka. The officers think a computer is a typewriter. All Politicians are scared of free thinking. They bar content development in local languages (Sinhala & Tamil) and educate the people with dignity of labour.

Its great to see the web site running. Its so nice all the info. is laid out and easy to access. I really like the evolution of A in sinhala. The is very informative as well. Hope you are getting lots of hits on it! To have a title heading in English as well. All in all, weldone for akuru.org

Thanks, Have corrected the index page

Thanks for your e-mail. I agree with you that we should first resolve the issue with encoding Sinhala characters before we can start proper research on Sinhala language. We faced with the same problem when doing our research, but were forced to adopt one of the existing encodings due to unavailablity of Unicode fonts in Sinhala. As far as i know, there is some effort going on in University of Colombo School of Computing for developing Unicode fonts, but i am not aware of the details.

I went through your website. I am really happy to see that you are truely interested and concerned about this issue. Thanks for the wonderful work. But I have some comments on your opinion.

I agree with you that SLS people (and those who were behind the first "standard" about 7 years ago) did not have a clear idea of what to do. They simply copied what ISCII (indian starndard). The current SLS1134 is basically the same as ISO/Unicode standard. In the Unicode standard they have control characters common to all languages that will facilitate the use of many glyps for the same code combination such as ZWJ, ZWNJ, et. This standard assumes them so the problem of displying the type of words you display in your website does not arrise. We only have to stardardize which of these control characters should be used for which words, then the rest can be handled by a rendering engine. I have not extensively studied the new starndard, but from what i see, there are no major ommisions in this standard.

The sorting order has nothing to do with the sequence of letters in the code chart. It is true that for languages such as English (which share latin alphabet) this can be achieved by simply having the letters in the chard according to the order of alphabet. But for all other asian languages which has complex character combinations, this is not possible. For that you have to have a separate program that would take care of sorting. Sorting order is beyound the scope of a code chart.

The tamil language has a separate code page, which is taken care of by Indian Standards Institue. The Unicode standard for Tamil and most widely used Tamil starndard are different. I don't know any person who use Unicode Tamil standard. I don't think SLS have to worry about this, because there is already a standard which is working fine.

I didn't fully understand the concept of 'Sinhala and Tamil Character Matrix', also its need. But I do agree that we need other technologies such as OCR, Speech Recognition, Synthesis, etc. to facilitate Sinhala language usage in IT. We have donw some work in the past regarding OCR/Handwriting recognition in both Sinhala/Tamil languages. But a lot has to be done.

Languages such as Japanese and Korean having a large number of individual characters can be simply sort in a computer. You can use all these languages in OCR, Text to voice , Voice to Text This is because all these are given an individual location in unicode.

Even the Latin code is incorrect. The capital "A" should be followed by simple "a" . That is why you all have sorting problems (in excel or in any database) I have open my web page akuru.org as a beginning of a "INDIC-UNICODE" system.

The character code that SLSI have published is incomplete see attach image1134. You talk of code combinations (code combination such as ZWJ, ZWNJ) but these are not shown in 1134. How do you write the sinhala word "DUMRIYA" in SLS1134. If you talk about this why do they have four "a" in this 1134 standard. one "A" would do the purpose like in the Wijesekara Keyboard. As you said they have just copied the Indian Tamil so we got to correct the issue by canceling the present SLS1134 which is still open for public discussion and redo the whole coding. We need not copy the indian stuff. Even the indians are now redoing the unicode They have done this for Dewanagari. Bangladesh is correcting the character code

All SLSI have to do is identify all the sinhala characters and publish them in the correct alphabetical order. Think beyond the typewriter concept. If you have some books printed in 1950's feel them. All printers used individual sinhala characters. None of these books could be republished with the computer technology. I cannot permit a SLSI to ruin our culture. According to our constitution of our country we have to do in both Tamil and Sinhala.

I know most of the sinhala guys do not agree with me in this issue but the truth is I got to do both Sinhala and Tamil. Unless the Govt. change the constitution and bring Sinhala only policy or English only policy, I will only have to follow it.

The Indian version of Tamil which is called Tamil99 is outdated

When you are free I would like to meet you and talk more since you have done some work in OCR and Sinhala Handwriting I really appriciate you work.

Good. You've got them by balls!! This is a fundamental mistake made by Gxxxx Dxxxx and either he is too stupid or too arrogant to admit it

To understand this comment one should know Sinhala Language - see - Save our Language Sinhala

Introduced Sinhala and Tamil Keyboards!!!!

Just beause a keyboard having a key cap character locations will not image the language without the OS support
If any OS supports a particular language you can use any keyboard to access it.
Key caps are just a guide line for the humans.
You can now understand how the public is fooled by our IT guys.

Since you are working on the Sinhala computing, I am sure you will also be interested in what Lanka Linux User Group has been doing during the past.

http://sinhala.linux.lk
http://www.linux.lk/~anuradha/sinhala/screenshots/
http://sinhala.linux.lk/pub/0.2/screenshots/

I am CCing the Sinhala GNU/Linux list. Those who don't know Donald, please have a look at http://www.akuru.org

Thank you for the links and introducing my site to your friends.
The problem I find is the "TEXT" data will not be compatible with other Operating Systems.
This is simply because the SLS 1134 - unicode do not have all the sinhala characters in its matrix.
This is the only issue I have.
We all got to join and make voice to include all individual characters into the SLS 1134.
"Save our Language Sinhala"

I wanted to send a congratulatory e-mail to you. But I was very busy. I always encouraged you knowing of your success someday. I everday read news in Lankapage.

Thanks

If you look at basic set theory, either a set can be defined by listing out all its elements (e.g.: set A and set B above), or by defining the way it is generated. The technical report above explains how this definition is done, and the paper by Dr Gihan and Aruni - which you have kind of miss-quoted on www.akuru.org - defines them for Sinhala specifically

Have I miss quoted? I have just given a link to the document. You guys are distroying Sinhala Language.
If you have the guts why not translate that document into Sinhala Language and publish it in Sinhala News papers and on Sri Lanka TV at your cost and see the public responce. We have to define every sinhala character by listing all elements.

Thanks for sharing.
We appreciate your dedication and service to the country.

Thanks

Thanks very much for the newspaper clipping from the Daily Mirror. It is a good story. I hope it will get the attention of and positive response from the right authority.May 2005 bring success to your laudable efforts in this area.

Thanks

Perhaps the most hard-hitting article on your crusade for a Sinhala character allocation table. Keep on trying!

Thanks

I enjoyed very much the focus on the subject given by Gamini Akmeemana. He has underscored points that you cannot do yourself, because there is a limit to how much you can present your ideas about yourself!!! But, I am glad that after so much on the topic that you have written, someone else has also understood the factors involved and that all this hoopla about “e-governance” is really a lot of rubbish that a few are only “talking” about but have no intention of implementing because no one CARES!!!!! “Uda Balaa Kela Geseema” is a way of life in Lanka, not to mention the most powerful emotion that has ruled this land since Devanampiyatissa - “Irshiyawa”.!!!!!!
Keep up the good work!!!

Thanks

It is very encouraging to see your photograph and Gamini’s article in the Daily Mirror. In our country the law of the educated is some what similar to the one of the jungle. Leaders never allow others to reach their levels without bloodshed. But people like you should keep on fighting .Then only this structure can be shaken and an alarming signal can be sent to those above that there are others to equal or surpass them. Wish you all the best .Keep on fighting.

Thanks

Thank you for visiting Microimage and sharing your proposed character allocation table. We can see that, you too have a system that can be implemented, and when we look at it initially we felt it's quite easy to implement in technical terms. Further to facilitate any other systems such as OCR, Voice/TEXT etc. However, when we discuss this further we found it's bit difficult to technically implement + we have to stick to the industry standard which industry as a whole follows, ex: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Mobile Operators etc. Further, their operating systems and applications will be designed to support Unicode. Therefore, we need to work within the Unicode framework. (Please refer attached PPT, which illustrates where industry giant like Microsoft is moving with their office application, and how Japanese/Korean languages rally around it.) The next thing is, if the above people facilitate OS level support for Unicode, we only have to develop the required applications/engines. Therefore there is no necessity for us to implement a unique code point for each and every character.
However, I understand the fact that the proposed Unicode standard has complexities and difficult to understand the technical implementation of it, which people needs to be educated upon. Further, there are various other application implementation issues as well, nevertheless, it's a starting point, and it's agreed standard for the industry, where everyone has to move with it, and revisions will happen time to time. Further we have understood that all the indic languages (which we studied) use 128 code points, hence
such implementation. Even Bangla/Tamil/Malayalam uses this mechanism. We studied your book, and as per that you have interpreted that in proposed SLSI 1134 you cant type certain words / sentences etc, however, we would like to notify, all that is highlighted can be typed without a problem. Even OCR/ too can be implemented as the required technical engines/rendering engines will identify the code points accordingly.
So in summery, our view is,

- Your argument has a point since it's difficult to understand for a ordinary person. (Proposed UNICODE Standard)
- Using present UNICODE you can type anything and develop applications too, but there are technical challenges the developers/industry has to overcome.
- Even on the mobile/OCR applications etc, we have to have required representation engines to facilitate Unicode. So still it's doable.
- Way we see your proposed mechanism technical implementation is a challenge + it's against the Unicode Standard (I mean the Unicode consortium, not ICTA). Basically, way we understood your implementation is not a UNICODE IMPLEMENTATION, hence it's not going to
work from an industry point of view.
- Finally, all we can say is present proposed UNICODE has so many challenges to overcome, however it's the world wide accepted norm where world is moving, where the trend is, where software developers rally around, hence we have to move forward and achieve the desired goals overcoming technical challenges. Further, I advise you to study the Unicode based drivers + Fonts, where you will be convinced how code points operate, how entire character set is represented etc. We can send you the Microimage version of it, and we are pleased to show you how it works etc. Even the Cut and Paste will work once the required DLL support and application support comes for respective
applications.

===============Post Script comment ========
At the meeting you were impressed by my presentation of individual characters. Microimage System developed for Sinhala SMS is also based on individual shinhala characters and not of UNICODE SLS 1134 parts of characters and not using a Wijesekera Key board but something similar to QWERTY Key sets.
.
You also confirmed that by using unicode SLS 1134 text of a one application cannot be copied to another application unless that application do process a similar rendering mechanism. .

You use full individual characters for SMS and contradicts it again this confuses me!!!!!!
.
.========================================
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.
.

Normally Unicode accept the National Standard of the country not the other way We have registered a wrong set to the unicode and then made it as the National SLS1134 Standard I have made objections to it along with the Printers Association. Also these objections were Telecast by MTV and published in Lakbima News paper. SLS 1134 is not yet gazetted.
Technically the people who are doing the SLS 1134 will have to show working models.With the actual locations of Characters. We do not have a single working model based on SLS 1134. Samples of SMS, OCR, Voice to text (v,v,)
SLS 11134 have accepted Wijesekera Keyboard but it do have "yansaya" and "repaya" one "ayanna" When you compare this with Sinhala unicode you get a different picture. What ever the mechanism unicode uses all the available characters have to be displayed.
A+B=C to render "C" the image data has to be somewhere in the OS or in the font
Also why unicode have four "Ayannas"?
We got to correct the Sinhala unicode and SLS 1134 unconditionally. Using only the Unicode list one cannot render all the characters without the hidden sets. Once the hidden sets are published all the software developers can use the same locations and make data compatible.
Example
One cannot copy (unformatted) text from Helawadana document to any other application
Technically Sri Lanka need not accept unicode. We can have our own standard based on our requirements.
Simply because we are not using Sinhala Characters to write a different Language (Example transliterate French)
If you come over I can show you how Japanese system works It works on FEP (front end processing) later this had been copied by Microsoft and named it IME
Are you coming this way? Expecting a call from you 258-8893

This is good not only the parliament all important government sites are in English. So sad situation in Sri Lanka to promote Sinhala and English.
Today I found a deposit slip printed for Bank of Ceylon with 5 Tamil mistakes. I want to write to the bank how ever much we do this they are not serious about what they are doing.

Just read your letter to the editor of Daily Mirror. Thanks for keeping up pressure on this very important issue.
A lot of educated and otherwise well informed people don't realise the monumental mess we are in where Sinhala fonts are concerned. This is because the ICTA and UCSC are very good at keeping people in the dark.
This e-journalist activity is another propaganda exercise by ICTA. They are misusing World Bank funds - which they have in abundance - to basically 'bribe' journalists to write sunshine stories about ICTA. This is why none of the Sinhala newspapers will now allow a free and open discussion on Sinhala fonts.

I suggest that you bring all these issues to the notice of Prof. V.K.Samaranayake, who as you know the executive chairman of the ICTA and has a directly responsibility of implementing the e-SL programme.
vks@icta.lk

Well asked - but don't expect these people to reply!
The Chairman of ICTA is also the former chairman of CINTEC who created the current problem with Sinhala fonts. He is the least likely to do anything to resolve it, because he will then be exposing his earlier bungling.
Besides, his UCSC 'golaya' Nandasara and his buddy J B Disanayaka have globe-trotted for a decade saying they are doing Sinhala fonts. All that will be exposed and brought into question the moment things are done PROPERLY even at this late stage.
What is the status of your patent now? If that's secure, why don't you release it to the market with necessary precautions, so that it will come into use? That way, the superior product will attract interest, users and sideline the simpletons' simplistic effort....
You and I may not personally like the market very much, but sometimes we have to strategically play the market to get ahead, and to sidestep the self-serving babus such as those in ICTA....
All the best in your struggles.

Comments from Sapumal.Jayaratne

Comments from Sulochana Paranagama

Sinhala Unicode does not support all the cahracters in my name.I cannot read anything. I see only boxes in my screen. Is this garbage or a virus?????

Hi Sulochana,
It is all Sinhala Unicode. See how I see it in my google inbox in the image I attached. Follow the instructions at http://sapumal.jayaratne.googlepages.com/sinhalainwindows and install Sinhala support. Let me know if you have any difficulties. Thanks,

Dear Sapumal,
Very good. I am delighted to learn from a 'Unicode-punditaya' like you. Attached is the Sinhala Unicode character set. Available at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0D80.pdf
Can you please show me where letters like 'Yansaya', 'Repaya' or the combined letters appear in this UNICODE character set.
Now please do not refer to SLS 1134 standards or any other site. I am talking only about UNICODE.
As far as I know UNICODE does not support some of the Sinhala characters.
So tell me how some one with Yansaya or Repaya in a name writes his/her name using UNICODE character set.
Thanks in advance,
Sulochanaa

Unicode character set does not contain 'Yansaya' or 'Repaya' and it is not required to have them in the character set. This is similar to absence of them in the 'Sinhala Hodiya'. Sinhala Hodiya (You can refer a Hody Potha) does not contain those letters but you did not raised that question but when it come to Unicode you want 'Yansaya' be ther in the character set. If you need to use Sinhala in computers the instruction in the page I sent you with the last mail is enough. If you want to learn deep on Sinhala Unicode you have to read and I am sorry I cannot help. My intention is to help people who have not Sinhala Unicode literacy, and not to argue with the ones who cannot understand even simple things like 'Yansaya' and 'Repaya'.
> As far as I know UNICODE does not support some of the Sinhala characters.

This is totally wrong. This is a big myth on Sinhala Unicode. Why are you asking this question? Instead just look at the image at http://sapumal.jayaratne.google pages.com/sinhalainwindows And why dont you try it? It is very simple to follow the instruction there and you can type 'yansaya' and 'rapaya' with your own. So please try it. Do not make any assumptions without trying.
> So tell me how some one with Yansaya or Repaya in a name writes his/her name using UNICODE character set.
If you can understand the simple things in
http://www.fonts.lk/pdf/workshop-unicodesinhala-harsha(1).pdf then you will not raise this question again.
Thanks,
Sapumal.

So you admit Sinhala Unicode is not complete and someone who has yansaya or repaya in their names cannot write their names using Unicode. Thanks.

You have learnt Sinhala from the Gunasena hodiyas published for the small children. How do you say Yansaya and Repaya not Sinhala letters. Please refer to the correct original Sinhala hodiya by Cumaratunage Munidasa or the one in Sidath Sangara. You will find Yansaya and Repaya in those hodiyas. Are you a baby to refer to hodi potha? Modayo, yansaya and repaya do not appear in hodipotha because small children do not study all those characters. Not because they are not part of the alphabet.

Baka pandithayas and kaalakannis like you only are the biggest enemies of the Sinhala language. PLEASE DO NOT DESTROY SINHALA LANGUAGE.

End of Sapumals Correspondance

End of Sulochana's Correspondance

I request the public to make more voices on this subject to save Sinhala Language and send me the contents to upload into this site. -Donald-

    I got your book.Thank you very much for this. This is the best detailed sinhala document I have ever seen.I have not seen a single book like this before. This is what the authorities should do. How can a non sinhala person can learn about the language without this (entire character set) ? I am not a sinhala professional and I was asking this from the people who work on sinhala for atleast a book that contains this completely for many years and until now no one were able to show this except u.
 I will go through this document soon.
 Thank you very much again.

Thank you for the comments. I am happy I found one person who has understood the need of Sinhala Characters.If you come across any missing character or characters please let me know to correct in the next version.
ISBN 955-98975-0-0, available by sending me an E mail.
lankaprinter@gamil.com
No book shop likes to display this book!!! in Sri Lanka!!!!
May be the low cost US cts sixty only.
I need sponcership to print and distribute free among school children.

Interesting - mails from Thiwanka

My replies to Thiwanka

From : http://groups.google.com/group/Sinhala-Unicode?lnk=lr -unicode and mr donald :
Dear Anuradha and others,
Since we see that Mr donald is repeatedly saying that the unicode has all these problems and the jpeg images you have shown him are fabricated, why dont you invite him (and other sceptics, if any) to your office or some other place and give a demonstration of what sinhala unicode is capable of. It's obvious for us that mr donald is sadly and pathetically mistaken. But I really feel sorry for him to keep saying the same thing over and over and making a joke of himself. So Anuradha and others, why dont you consider my suggestion above ?
kind regards
Thiwanka Wimalasuriya
Software Engineer (JAVA)

Dear Mr donald,
This is regarding the sinhala unicode and the telephone call you made to my office,
First i must clarify,
im not involved with anyone who defined or develped the sinhala unicode. I'm also not involved with SLS1134.
i'm not involed with LKLUG
I also do not want to start any arguments like you had with Harshula, Anuradha, ....... I dont want to discuss SLS1134.
But the fact remains that
1. people can write in sinhala with sinhala unicode
2. can produce "Bandi akuru" "Repaya" "yansaya" and such charactors with unicode
3. The jpeg images for they show you are not fabricated
Please do not contact with me regarding sinhala unicode. I do not use it, i do not write in it. But I everyday see the mails written in unicode without any problem.
But I suggest that you challenge Anuradha and others who use it ever day. They will show you that they are using unicode and produsing the characters in the form we know to be sinhala.
Anyway If you have to discuss with me, please call me on xxxxxxxxxxx after 9pm on weekdays or at any time on saturday.

Since you are a computer educated person

1. Pls let me know the code point for the sinhala character "DU" or any Badhi akura based on the sinhala chart registered in the unicode.org/charts.It has to be "YYYY" four digits

Dear Mr. Donald,
for "du yanna"
unicode for "da" and unicode for "paa pilla" should be needed.
please do not ask me how this can be done because i do not use sinhala unicode.
why dont you challenge LKLUG or Anuradha or any such sinhala unicode guru to demonstrate sinhala unicode for you. again, i do not want to start an argument with you.

Dear Mr Donald,
simply put, we do not need each of these ka kaa ke kee ki kii ku kuu mapped to a seperate unicode point.
what we need is unicode for
"ka" "kha" "ga" "gha" .......
and unicode for "ela pilla" "paa pilla"
Please do not keep on asking questions from me since i'm not the person to ask these.
anyway please understand that im a very busy person. I getup at 5am to go to work and I come home at 8:30, 9:00. So please understand that I have zero time to continue with this dialog let alone answer all your unicode questions
if you want to know how it works and ins and outs of sinhala unicode please contact people like Anuradha, Sapumal , Harshula who use sinhala unicode everyday without any problem. why dont you challenge them to show you how they do it ? may be you can go meet in person or invite them to your office/recidence.

It is very sad to get a mail from a java engineer who think " computer is a type writer ".

You are working for a company that they try to sell solutions

I wonder what type of solution your customers get when they employ "Yes Sir" people

You cannot think byond the frame!!! This is your negative factor!

Bye

i have just one word for you mr donald
prejudice.
dont assume things about people.
dont mix personal things like where one work, with other things
anyway this conversioan is over and all the mails you will send will go directly to trash.

Since he trash my mail I have not sent a reply.He started in the thread but when I raised a simple question relative to his subject software and JAVA (not a personal question) he avoids the correct answer.
Visit
http://www.akuru.org/images/rawaya2.jpg
Sri Lanka need people with a proper back bone to develop IT industry.

End of thread

End of thread -Thiwanka