A few weeks ago I asked my wife if she’d heard about the Unicode migration count down. My question was inspired by my discovery, only then, of the YouTube video on Unicode migration launching ceremony organized mainly by the government and the Myanmar Computer Federation, in August of this year. I don’t keep a Facebook account, but my wife like other countless housewives who own smart phones, has one. She and her friend-base of 100 or so exchanged photos, birth day wishes, news, and comments. Time to time she show me some interesting things on her wall, or asked me to fix the scrambled words she saw. But any time since the Unicode launching ceremony I haven’t heard a word from my wife on the Unicode issue. Matter of fact, my wife doesn’t know anything about the fonts or even that she has been typing her comments on the Facebook with Zawgyi font!
She answered she don’t know and asked me if I do. I said I do, and added that we need to jump the Unicode bandwagon now because we are the only country left to do so, and that Bangladesh, the one that had done this before us did that 10 years ago. Also, with a little bragging, I said I had been using Unicode from the beginning.
The truth is that I had been active in social-economic survey area for about a decade from about 2003, where the main use for Myanmar language is in creating the questionnaires. We used the Win Researcher font and created multi-page questionnaires in Microsoft Excel. Remember, in those days we have neither Zawgyi or Unicode as yet. But then, I had never used Zawgyi. Later I came to know about Unicode, installed Myanmar3 and some other Unicode compliant fonts and experimented with them.
Unicode font and keyboard for the PC
Recently, I had looked in the Myanmar Computer Federation’s website and found out about the Pyidaungsu Unicode Myanmar font. I downloaded and installed the font as well as the KeyMagic keyboard (alternatively the Keyman keyboard) for my laptop using the “All-in-One Installer 5.2” from here. Later I also installed and tested the Keyman keyboard. The difference between these two keyboards is that with Keyman you get an onscreen keyboard for your PC also.
From the MCF’s download center you can download the Open Office software with Myanmar language user interface (UI):
So long as I can remember most of us had used pirated copies of Microsoft Office, since the days of the Windows XP. Those days there wasn’t any choice for us if I understand it correctly. Then came the shareware, freeware, and open-source software. At last we have had the chance to be free. Open Office became my MS Office alternative. I had tried out different free utilities, productive, and professional software alternatives such as Grass and QGIS, GIMP, Inkscape, 7-Zip, VLC media player and many became my staples. Then I discovered the R Statistical computing and graphics environment and become captivated ever since!
So I felt a bit uncomfortable when I see that the user manual for Pyidaungsu font shows how to type text in MS Word:
I would prefer the manual to mention somewhere to the effect that “This example shows how to type in Microsoft Word, if you have the legal copy of that software installed. If not, you may like to install and use an MS Office alternative such as Open Office or LibreOffice that is legal and free.”
Unicode virtual keyboard for mobile phone
I looked around for a virtual keyboard for Android phones. I chose the Gboard keyboard by Google. I tried installing it from the Google Play Store and to my surprise I found that my Nexus-5 came installed with Gboard so that it ended up with updating that software. I’ve never used Zawgyi and typing Unicode now with Gboard is fine. I recommended Gboard to a Zawgyi user and now he has migrated to Unicode with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment