The following is a DRAFT of a proposal for comments by the internet tamil community. Early in 1998 (January ?), this draft will be finalised and the proposal presented to the Tamilnadu Computer Standardisation Committee (TNC) for possible adoption as a Standard.

A Proposal for
A Tamil Standard Code For Information Interchange
(TSCII)
Part-II (inclusive of Annexes)

References

1. V.S. Rajam, A reference grammer of Classical Tamil Poetry, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, , p.1, (1992); Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 21, p.647-648, 1972 ed.
2. A pot-pourri of web-sites of interest to tamils:
http://www.oocities.org/Athens/5180/tlinks.html
3. TamilNet'97: International Symposium for Information Processing and Internet Resources in Tamil, National Univ. of Singapore, Aug. 1997:
http://www.irdu.nus.sg/tamilweb/tamilnet97/paper/html/content.html
4. An overview of different approaches to word-processing in Tamil and a proposal towards standardisation of tamil computing, K. Kalyanasundaram, Talk delivered at TamilNet'97:
http://www.oocities.org/Athens/5180/sintalk1.html
5. Recommended Keyboard Layouts for Tamil Computing of the Tamilnadu Tamil Computing Standardisation Advisory Committee:
http://irdu.nus.sg/tamilweb/tamilnet97/doc-draft/keyboard-layout.html
6. Internet-based Tamil Email Discussion List Tamilnet :
http://www.tamil.net/
7. Internet-based Tamil Email Discussion List TamilWeb :
http://irdu.nus.sg/tamilweb/mailinglist.html
8. Unicode Standard for Multilingual Computing:
http://www.unicode.org/
9. Unicode and Tamil: Issues with Implementation, Muthulilan M. Nedumaran
http://www.irdu.nus.sg/tamilweb/tamilnet97/paper/html/muthu.htm
10. Multi-lingual Support on Windows
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/multilang/default.htm
11. Indian Language Kit
http://www.macos.apple.com/multilingual/indian.html
List of Annexes
Annex -1
Click here to go to Glyph choices and their code assignments for the proposed Tamil Standard Code for Information Interchange (TSCII).
Annex-2: Correspondance Table to Unicode standard
Click here to go to Character mapping table to go between proposed TSCII and Unicode (version 2.0) standard.
Annex-3: C++ routines to aid sorting
Click here to go to A representative C++ source code to aid sorting of tamil script-based databases

Annex-4: Signatories for the Proposed Standard

The following are a partial list of persons who have actively participated in the development of the above proposal and who are fully committed to implement the standard as soon as it is recognized. The list includes font/software developers, academics/tamil scholars, owners of major websites and scientists/engineers committed to promote tamil computing world-wide.
(The list will be arranged alphabetically in the final version!! - those names with ??? at the end are yet to formally state their consent to go in this list)
Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram (Chemist/Academic, Swiss Federal Inst. of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland, email: kalyanasundaram@epfl.ch;) author of the widely used Tamil Font Mylai, owner of website Tamil Electronic Library, interest in electronic texts in tamil,..
Mr. Muthu Nedumaran (Software Engineer/Technical Manager for Software Products, Oracle Corp, Singapore, email: Muthu Nedumaran (muthu@sg.oracle.com); author of "Murasu" DTP packages in tamil; author of popular tamil text editor/email reader Anjal, founder of Internet email discussion list Tamilnet,....
Mr. Bala Pillai (CEO of Sydney based Asia-Pacific Internet Company, a major ISP agency in South Asia/Finance, Marketing Manager, email: bala@apic.net): founder of the Internet email discussion list Tamilnet
Mr. Mani Manivannan (Software Engineer, California, USA)(experienced professional software developer who has among other things led the development of the Norton Antivirus versions 1.5 through 2.1, and with a strong interest in Tamil computing.)
Mr. Ravindran K. Paul (Software Engineer), Kuala Lampur, Malaysia (author of thunaivan, Tamil DTP softwares )
Dr.K. Srinivasan (Mech.Engineer/Researcher), Hydro-Quebec Research Center, Montreal, Canada (author of Adhami, Thiru, Adhawin tamil softwares)
Prof. Harold Schiffman (Tamil Researcher/Academic), Univ. of Pennsylvania, Penn, USA
(developer of a major internet-based tamil learning website, author of tamil DTP package)
Dr. Vasu Ranganathan (Tamil Researcher/Academic), Univ. of Pennsylvania, Penn, USA
(co-developer of a major internet-based tamil learning website, author of tamil teaching softwares)
Mr. Adrian D'Costa/Mr. Cassina, PCS Advertising, Chennai (Publishers of nakkeeran and KanaiyAzhi tamil magazines online on internet
Prof. George Hart ??? (Tamil Researcher/Academic), Univ. of California, Berkeley, California, USA (Responsible for a major, forthcoming tamil electronic archive)
Dr. Kumar Mallikarjunan (Researcher in Agrosciences/Academic), Univ. of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA (author of tamilwebsite with strong interests to promote tamil computing)
Dr. Ram Ravindran (Medical Researcher/Academic), Indiana Univ-Purdue Univ, Indianapolis, IN, USA (author of website for tamil learning on internet with strong interests to promote tamil computing)
.......

to be filled in


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Annex-5: Dissent Note

Discussions towards defining a standard for Tamil Computing took place through the mailing lists for several months. The draft encoding standard proposed here is one for which many wrote expressing their support (see the supporters list cited above). But there were also a handful of persons who expressed their displeasure with some of the specifics of the proposal, e.g. objections for the inclusion of grantha characters and/or tamil numerals that are in the encoding scheme (e.g. grantha characters and tamil numerals). In order that the present draft fully represent the pro and con side of discussions, we would like to list here those who are NOT in agreement with the present proposal. Please send me a brief note (in one or two paragraph, outlining the area of dissent) with identification details on you that can go as part of the document. We will add your comments here.

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This file was last updated on12 Jan 1998.
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