Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange

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Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange(TSCII) is a coding scheme for representing theTamil script.The lower 128 codepoints are plainASCII,the upper 128 codepoints are TSCII-specific. After long years of being used on the Internet by private agreement only, it was successfully registered with theIANAin 2007.^[1]

TSCIIencodes the characters in visual (written) order, paralleling the use of the Tamil Typewriter.

Unicodehas used the logical order encoding strategy for Tamil, followingISCII,in contrast to the case ofThai,where the visual order encoding grandfathered byTIS-620was adopted.

The government ofTamil Naduendorses its own TAB/TAM standards for 8-bit encoding and other, older encoding schemes can still be found on the WWW.

The free etext collection atProject Maduraiuses theTSCIIencoding, but has already started to provideUnicodeversions.

History

The need for a common encoding for Tamil was felt by members of various mailing list based forums in mid-1990s, as there were multiple custom coded fonts were prevalent in those forums. While some of the commercial encodings were popular than the others, they were not accepted by wider community due to conflicting commercial interests. While Unicode was accepted by most as the future standard, most of the desktop systems at that time were still not capable of handling Unicode for Tamil language, and an interim 8-bit encoding was required.

A separate mailing list for discussion of such encodings ([email protected]) was created in 1997 to initiate this discussion, starting with an email written byDr.K.Kalyanasundaramto the popular Tamil authorSujathawho headed the committee for standardization of Tamil keyboard.^[2]This forum quickly attracted enthusiastic participants from across the globe, including several prominent Tamil scholars. Archives of these discussion are maintained byINFITT.^[3]

Subsequent to publishing TSCII, most of the members of [email protected] mailing list became part of INFITT, which is a wider initiative to bring in standardization and continued development in various areas of Tamil computing.

Codepage layout

TSCII
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
8x	௦^[a]	௧	ஸ்ரீ	ஜ	ஷ	ஸ	ஹ	க்ஷ	ஜ்	ஷ்	ஸ்	ஹ்	க்ஷ்	௨	௩	௪
9x	௫	‘	’	“	”	௬	௭	௮	௯	ஙு	ஞு	ஙூ	ஞூ	௰	௱	௲
Ax	NBSP	ா	ி	ீ	ு	ூ	ெ	ே	ை	©	ௗ	அ	ஆ		ஈ	உ
Bx	ஊ	எ	ஏ	ஐ	ஒ	ஓ	ஔ	ஃ	க	ங	ச	ஞ	ட	ண	த	ந
Cx	ப	ம	ய	ர	ல	வ	ழ	ள	ற	ன	டி	டீ	கு	சு	டு	ணு
Dx	து	நு	பு	மு	யு	ரு	லு	வு	ழு	ளு	று	னு	கூ	சூ	டூ	ணூ
Ex	தூ	நூ	பூ	மூ	யூ	ரூ	லூ	வூ	ழூ	ளூ	றூ	னூ	க்	ங்	ச்	ஞ்
Fx	ட்	ண்	த்	ந்	ப்	ம்	ய்	ர்	ல்	வ்	ழ்	ள்	ற்	ன்	இ

^U+0BE6 TAMIL DIGIT ZERO, which was added with Unicode version 4.1 in March, 2005

Conversion Tools

You can convert UTF-8 encoded documents to TSCII using the GNU iconv tools as follows,

$iconv-futf-8-ttsciihello.utf8>hello.tscii

Whereas conversion from TSCII to UTF-8 is done by interchanging-fand-tflags.

Visual Application

An open source project is available atAnyTaFont2UTF8is maintained byIsaiyini Tamil Community

References

External links

[4] U+0BE6 TAMIL DIGIT ZERO, which was added with Unicode version 4.1 in March, 2005

[1] ttps:// iana.org/assignments/charset-reg/TSCII^{[bare URL plain text file]}

[2] "A proposal for font encoding scheme for tamil".

[3] "Tamil Discussion at [email protected]".

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