Re: [WMASTERS] Standards

["Muthu Nedumaran" <MNEDUMAR@sg.oracle.com>]

Dear Friends,

Is this thread really neccessary ?  We have spent so much time putting
together a common standard with all of us having equal opportunities to
extend a piece of our minds - with the hope of eliminating emotional
attachments, proprietory locks etc.  All of us contributed and the 'new'
'standard' that is emerging will ultimately belong to all of us - and
the rest who want to work on Tamil etext.  As such, may I suggest that
we focus on what we have cooked so far and study the pros and cons ?

anbudan,

~ MUTHU



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• To: webmasters@tamil.net
• Subject: [WMASTERS] Standards
• From: "George Hart <ghart@socrates.berkeley.edu>" <owner-webmasters@tamil.net>
• Date: 05 Oct 97 01:27:38
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• Reply-to: webmasters@tamil.net,ghart@socrates.berkeley.edu
• Sender: owner-webmasters@tamil.net

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I find it distressing that people are so attached to the font encoding they
happened to make.  For everyone's information, I was the first in the world
to develop a Tamil font on a computer.  This was using a Lisa + Mac in the
early '80's.  I have absolutely NO attachment to my encoding scheme, even
though I have put literally thousands of hours into it, and have printed
many books with it.

PLEASE, we need a standard -- this is not a personality contest.  My own
feeling is that we should use a 7-bit font with kerning (like mine), but I
don't care as long as we have something everyone will use.

Govindasamy writes,

>Dear George
> you have all the right to suggest Inaimathi font to be the interim
>standard. I only found emotional attachment in your suggestion. As an
>academic we should go for facts. from  your mail, I understood that you
>are not well informed of the facts that is surrounding the  Technology
>which made Total Tamil Internet Solution possible on Internet.

Ravindran replies,

>The TamilNet encoding is totally proprietary to select indviduals
>and was not allowed to be used by local Malaysian and Singapore
>developers despite repeated requests. Even now, this copyright is
>selectively enforced.

Is this true?  If so, how could we make the TamilNet encoding a standard?
Please note that my fonts etc.  are in public domain and always have been.
In any case, there is no way in they world that you can copyright an
encoding scheme.

Govindasamy, Please answer the following questions:

1. Is your scheme proprietary?  If so, how can we use it?
2. In what respects is your scheme superior to Inaimathi or any other
standards propose?  Please answer with specifics, not just with the fact
that it is used widely.  My own encoding is used widely too.

Please note, my only emotional attachment is to Tamil, not to Govindasamy,
not to Muthu, not to myself.  I want to get something agreed upon, and I
don't care if it's the original scheme of Molly McGuire in Iowa, as long as
it works.

THANKS.  GH




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