Number of innovations for users of ICT in Sinhala and Tamil launched

The Information Communication Technology Agency launched 'Multitude of Sinhala Tamil Blogs' showing the power of technology for innovation yesterday.

"The multitude of Sinhala and Tamil blogs available shows how technology provokes innovation", says Information Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA). ICTA sources said that referring to the launch of a number of innovations for users of ICT in Sinhala and Tamil that took place yesterday. The multi-pronged launched makes the fruits of concerted endeavours available to users of ICT in Sinhala and Tamil.

In the recent past several projects have been completed under ICTA's 'Local Language Initiative' and yesterday's event was held to launch the third revision of the Sri Lanka Sinhala Character Code for Information Interchange which has been approved by SLSI as a Sri Lanka Standard, SLS 1134 : 2011. This version includes encoding for Sinhala numerals.

This is to be launched in partnership with the Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI).

Six new Sinhala fonts have been designed by the trainees who underwent ICTA's font development training and there has been resistance from various sectors towards using uni-code fonts citing the fact that only serious uni-code fonts were available.

Several uni-code Sinhala fonts of different styles have been developed at present such as a new uni-code Tamil font 'Sri Tamil', six new stylized Tamil fonts - "Chemmoli" series, a book on how to develop Sinhala and Tamil fonts, a keyboard driver for using Apple Mac with a Unicode Sinhala font - Mac Bhashitha.

At present using uni-code Sinhala and Tamil is the norm.

Local language content is being created. Nearly 300 uni-code compliant trilingual government websites are now available.