RISHIKESH, INDIA, December 9, 2005: HPI note: This is a technical computer issue, but one that is important for the correct publication of Hindu scriptures in Sanskrit. Omkarananda Ashram, who have developed the Itranslator program used by many, is appealing for help with the development of the new, universal, font coding system called Unicode. Unicode, once and for all, sets a standard for consistent encoding of all the world’s languages. Anyone who deals with translations knows that fonts used ten years ago for, say, Tamil, may be unconvertable to any current font. Unicode ends that problem.
The ashram writes:
The Devanagari script is used for writing classical Sanskrit as well as Vedic Sanskrit. The Unicode Standard provides codes for Devanagari characters in the range of 0900-097F, which are used for representing classical Sanskrit, Hindi and Marathi. However, it does not contain the additional characters needed for representing Vedic Sanskrit texts. Many of these characters combine with Devanagari characters and therefore constitute a part of the Devanagari script. To get these additional Vedic characters included in the Unicode standard, it is necessary to submit a formal proposal to the Unicode Consortium. Among other requirements, such a proposal has to be accompanied by references to dictionaries and other descriptive texts establishing authoritative information. Scanned pages showing the use of the proposed character are very useful. It is therefore important that everybody interested in Vedic Sanskrit should join hands to support an effort to get Vedic Accents included in the Unicode Standard. Go to “source” above for information on how to help. The immediate aim is to make a draft proposal which can be submitted for discussion to the mailing lists of Unicode, Indology, etc. so that there may be broad agreement among Sanskrit experts on which characters to include in a formal proposal.