Unicode ♥

Isn't it amazing to see unicode including drawings like umbrella, floral heart into its list of characters? An interesting list of unicode characters can be found here. I specifically find this and this more useful. Typing letters upside down is fun! Given below is my mostly used Unicode symbols. Hope you will find them interesting.. ;)

♥ - A Black / filled heart. I often use this to indicate *like*. ;)

♡ - A white heart. I use this along with the filled heart as a pair. ♡♥

❤ - A heavy black heart

♩ ♪♫ ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯ - Music Notes, which I almost always use whenever I share some music online.

✍ - ✎Writing..

☄ - Comet, reminds me fireflies.

✓✔ - Check marks.

❀ ⚘ ✿ ✾ - Flowers.. \yay/.. my all time favorite symbols.. :P
⚜ - Lilly
❆ - A design
✕ ✖ - Multiplication X
✗ ✘ - Ballot X
☮ - Peace, something that we always need..
☀ ☼ - Something(s) that reminds me the Sun. 
• - Big dot. It's rillly big..


© - Copyright, something that many of us do not care.
☺ ☹ - Smiley faces.. 
☕ ♨ - A cup of coffee for you.. ;)
✁ ✂ ✃ - Pairs of scissors ✄
☎ Call me.. or I will call you.. ☏.. both are fine with me.. ✆ :D
☠ - When stuff becomes dangerous.
☃ - Some cool stuff are hard to get. Same with the snowman.
☔ - I like the rain drops.. ☂ - Not yet raining though.. :P
☁ - Over the clouds..
★☆- Super stars..
✌ - Success!!!111
☘ - Leaves
☜    ☝    ☞    ☟ - Let me point you the facts.. :D
✈ High time.. \m/
.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨ - Cut it. Not a si.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨n.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨g.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨le c.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨h.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨a.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨r.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨a.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨c.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨t.̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨er. It takes many character points, actually.
☐☑☒

Install *this* font before reading!

Recently I was going through the online version of the teachers' guides from the National Institute of Education Sri Lanka (NIE). The major issue I noticed in those documents was, they have been written using non-unicode fonts (Sinhala - DL-Manel-bold and Tamil - Bamini). It should be noted that converting them to unicode is not very difficult given the UCSC converters. However the practical difficulty of using non-unicode fonts to the shared documents is, the other users are expected to have that particular font in their system. Copy-pasting into a plain text editor becomes impossible. Still I have seen many web sites asking to download the particular font to view their site correct. Some sites even ask the users to use Internet Explorer or some other specific browser. I would rather request them to change their site to unicode than asking each user to install their not-so-sexy font.

Here is a sample of the above mentioned issue.
mEka Odjlh - Written using DL-Manel-bold, which appears as garbage text here.
පෑන් ධාවකය - After converting to Unicode using the UCSC Font converter.

Similarly for Tamil
Ngid nrYj;jp - Bamini
பேனை செலுத்தி - After converting to Unicode using the UCSC Font converter.

I could also notice during the recent series of IT seminars in Jaffna peninsula, that the students who mentioned that they can type in Tamil were actually referring to their ability of typing using Bamini font. I guess we have created an awareness of Unicode among them. Unicode is much essential, if we really want to go beyond mere typing in local languages.

[GSoC 2009] Port AbiWord for Windows to Unicode

It's very nice to see me got selected for GSoC2009. And Abiword is one of the world's best and dedicated Open Source Organizations. I feel really honoured to join the Abi Team. 5 GSoC applicants have been selected for Abiword this time too, as usual (This was the case for the last 3 years).

My Project : Port AbiWord for Windows to Unicode

Project Proposal

Mentor : Mr.Dominic Lachowicz


List of Selected students for Abiword can be found here.

It's great to have a chance of getting a task that we prefer personally. GSoC offers us this opportunity. At this time, I have to consider more on my upcoming schedule and I will be following my project proposal time line for that.

I have to mention the great help offered to me during March and April by the Abiword developers. sum1, Robert Staudinger, Dominic Lachowicz, and Jordi Mas were always providing help and guidelines, whenever required, encouraging me and the other applicants.

Congratz to all my friends from University of Moratuwa who got selected for GSoC2009 and all the selected applicants for Abiword.

Awaiting an exciting summer!
Thank you.

Transliteration ~ Google and more ..

Google Transliterator

You may have already used Google's Indic Transliterator to type in the languages [Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu] using English characters. Transliteration tools, apart from providing the ability to type in Unicode, gives one more advantage. That is, one who can speak, yet can't write in a language can easily type in these languages by using the equivalent characters in English. While transliterating, suggestions are also provided so that we can choose one of them, in case of the confusion.

Google Transliterator can even convert the numbers typed in the Standard Hindu Arabic Numeral System to the local numeric systems specific to those language communities. This shows that Google Indic Transliterator is not just a transliterating utility.

Hindu Arabic Numbers : 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hindi : ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९
Kannada : ೦ ೧ ೨ ೩ ೪ ೫ ೬ ೭ ೮ ೯
Malayalam : ൦ ൧ ൨ ൩ ൪ ൫ ൬ ൭ ൮ ൯
Tamil : ௦ ௧ ௨ ௩ ௪ ௫ ௬ ௭ ௮ ௯
Telugu : ౦ ౧ ౨ ౩ ౪ ౫ ౬ ౭ ౮ ౯

Update as on 2010 March:

A recent visit to the Google transliterator showed me that now transliteration is possible even for languages not from Indic language family as well, including Arabic, Russian and Amharic (Ethiopian). Hence it should be noted that Google transliterator is no more a mere Indic transliterator. With more features, Google's transliterator stands as a standard online rich text editor at the moment.

UCSC Unicode Real Time Font Conversion Utility

Similar researches are done at University of Colombo School of Computing, Sri Lanka, and a Unicode Real Time Font Conversion Utility is being built. It provides us ways of typing in Sri Lankan languages Sinhala and Tamil, in Unicode. Apart from transliteration, it can also convert the non-unicode Sinhala/Tamil fonts that are mostly used in word processing into unicode, thus providing easy way to convert the stuff that were earlier typed in non-unicode fonts into the unicode representation.

Use of Unicode in AbiWord - Initial Discussions

This is a mail thread in the unicode mailing list started by one of the Abiword developers during the earliest stages of Abiword.
http://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/Archives-Old/UML014/0787.html
This thread contains a huge array of the discussions on the topic.
Even if you are not an Abiword developer, this mail thread is a good one to have a look, since it has many important views of many developers about Unicode applications.

Unicode support for Windows 9x

Unicode support for windows is not a new topic to discuss at all, since Windows NT. When it comes to internationalization (i18n) Unicode plays a major role. Hence the usage of Unicode is obvious and not a strange topic to discuss at all. But when it comes to the older Windows 95/98/ME Systems, we have to consider more factors. Most software have stopped supporting these legacy windows operating systems at all. In that case, they have no need to worry at all. If an application wants the Unicode support, yet running on these obsolete versions of windows, which do not have the native Unicode support, the problem arises.

To solve this issue, Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/ME Systems [MSLU] has been introduced. This component allows us to write a single Unicode application which can run on all the platforms, by providing a layer over the Win32 API on those earlier versions of Windows. MSLU contains two parts - Unicows.dll and Unicows.lib. MSLU is easy to use. Just compiling the application as a Unicode component and adding the Unicows.lib with the other libraries is enough. Similarly hence Unicows.dll doesn't load MSLU at all when using Windows NT or later, introducing this layer, doesn't cause a performance cost.

However it should also be noted that, MSLU not essentially will give the obsolete windows 9x versions, the same multilingual support that the later versions of windows provide. The application does get a Unicode face from MSLU, but still has to deal with a non Unicode operating system internally.