--- 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