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Attention! People Who Know Both Sinhala Language and Unicode: Please Help

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UPDATE : this problem was solved, thanks to the comments I received. topic is closed

Actually this is not what I wanted to post today. I was writing something else about Sinhala language, Unicode and blogging. However, I received few surprises via e-mail. A remarkable coincidence! So I opted to hold back my entry and share this with you. I invite all the better-informed people to enlighten me on this subject.

This e-mails was sent by Mr. Donald Gaminitillake after seeing one of my previous posts වැරැද්දක් ද? නැත්නම් හැටි ද? in which I expressed my concern over some problems related to the way Sinhala characters are displayed on various computers. According to Mr. Gaminitillake it’s the fault of current Sinhala Unicode standards. I’ve seen Mr.Donald Gaminitillake arguing against current Sinhala Unicode on Anuradha Ratnaweera’s blog.

This is the e-mail I got (I’m reproducing it with his permission)

———- message begins———-
From: Donald Gaminitilake
Date: May 7, 2007 2:03 PM
Subject: re alochana
To: Anandawardhana

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7528191@N04/

Please see the first image SLSI1134. This is what a unicode sinhala has. the Computer display according to the Unicode sinhala or SLSI1134. If we had registered all the Sinhala characters in the SLSI this will never happen.

++++++++++

I have enclosed the two images for you.



A Unicode font only have the registered number of characters or AKURU

That is why I object to Sinhala Unicode saying it is incomplete and incorrect

We got to correct the Standard.

Donald Gaminitillake

———- message ends———-

Before responding, I did my homework. Last night I reread

What is Sinhala Unicode?(Pdf)
Rendering Unicode Sinhala Characters(Pdf)
Is Sinhala Unicode Incomplete?
GNU/Linux debate
සිංහල යුනිකෝඩි පෙර පාසැල
http://www.unicode.org/review/pr-96.html
http://www.sinhalaunicode.org/
and of course Mr.Gaminitillake’s Akuru.org

As Donald shows us, this is what he’s able to see.



But I see perfect Sinhala on my monitor. Here’s what I see. (click image to enlarge)



Can somebody explain the reason for this difference? I don’t agree with Donald at all when he proposes to include all possible characters in the alphabet to the SLSI. Please see Anuradha Ratnaweera’s post for explanations. Currently, I fully agree with Anuradha and hope to post another blog entry explaining why. I completely reject the outrageous and unethical propaganda campaign carried out by Donald and his associates against veteran intellectual Prof V.K Samaranayake and the Sinhala Unicode project. Yes, we all love Sinhala language, but there should be a proper logic and convincing approach if one wants his ideas and concepts to be accepted. What they have done is absolutely disgusting. Well, that’s a different story and I will express my views on that in separate post. I wrote this in English because Mr. Gaminitillake might probably claim that he can’t read Unicode Sinhala.