--- Forwarded Message from "Read Gilgen" <[log in to unmask]> ---
>Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 13:24:07 -0500
>From: "Read Gilgen" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Language/Computer Code for LCTLs
------------------
I'm forwarding this message on behalf of Ed Hart. Please respond directly to him if you have information that can help, or if you're qualified/interested yourself. Thanks!
>>> "Hart, Edwin F." <[log in to unmask]> 10/16/00 10:54AM >>>
Dear Professor Gilgen,
Donald Clark of the Johns Hopkins University suggested that I contact the
International Association for Language Learning Technology for help in
locating language experts for various lesser used and historical languages
to help code them into a universal code for computers.
My name is Edwin Hart and I am a representative to the US Technical
Standards Committee for Codes and Character Sets (NCITS/L2) and the Unicode
Technical Committee (UTC). (If you have heard of the ASCII computer code
(ANSI X3.4-1986), NCITS/L2 is responsible for it plus many other codes.)
The UTC and L2 committees participate in the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) in an effort to code the characters of the world's
languages into international standard ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal Multi-Octet
Coded Character Set (UCS)) and the Unicode Standard (www.unicode.org). ISO
(www.iso.ch) has just published the second edition of ISO/IEC 10646-1, and
the Unicode Consortium has published _The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0_.
(Unicode describes additional information needed for software developers to
implement ISO/IEC 10646.) For the most part, we have coded the characters
needed commercially (e.g., Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Ethiopic,
Devanagari and other Indic scripts, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Korean,
Vietnamese, Mongolian, Tibetan, mathematics and symbols). The situation is
that as we start investigating lesser used and historical languages, we find
it more difficult to locate experts who can contribute to our effort. Our
needs vary. In some cases, we need experts to review and critique
proposals. In other cases, we need help identifying the unique characters
of a language to code to create our own proposal. If the International
Association for Language Learning Technology would be interested in helping
us identify experts to help our committees to code additional scripts,
please let me know.
Best regards,
Ed Hart
Edwin F. Hart
[log in to unmask]
Senior Engineer, Computing Systems Group
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
11100 Johns Hopkins Road
Laurel, MD 20723-6099
USA
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