To the FutureApr 25, 2008
Testing Burmese typing
I tried to type out the following text using Padauk Unicode font. It was from http://www.planet.com.mm forum. I thought it was a nice irony about Bagan for banning gtalk/gmail.
ဆိုဒ်တစ်ခု ကြိုက်လို့ငါ၀င် ရတ်ဂျစ်စတာ လုပ်ဖို့ငါပြင် တော့ ပေးစရာ မေးလ်မရှိ ဒီဒုက္ခ တော့ ပြေးစရာ နတ္ထိ ပါတကား။ စော်မကြည် ကျုပ်ဘ၀ ဆိုင်ဘာဂဲများနဲ့ စကောပြား စကားများပြောရအောင် အော် ဆရာသမား ဘန်းတာ တွေ ဖွင့်ပေးပါ ခင်ညား။ အနေဝေးကာနေ သူဇာပျို နိုင်ငံခြားမှာ တခြားသူလုမှာစိုးလို့ စကားများ ပြောရအောင် အော် ဆရာသမား ဘန်းတာ တွေ ဖွင့်ပေးပါ ခင်ညား။ သားတစ်ကောင် နိုင်ငံခြားက တစ်ပတ်ခြားတစ်ခါ ဂျီတော့မှာတွေ့ ရာက အခုတော့ ငါ့မှာလွမ်းရ အမယ်မင်း ငါ့သားတို့ရယ် အမေ့ကိုစာနာကြပါလား။ အများနာတကာနာကြားဖို့ တရားစာအုပ်များလဲတောင်းရအောင် ဟဲ့ ဒကာ ဒကာမများ ဂျီမေးလ်တော့ဖွင့်ကြပါလား။ အင်တာနက်သုံးနိုင်သော်ငြား ကောင်းတာမှန်ရင် ပိတ်ကာထားမှတော့ အို............ ဂေါတမဘုရား တပည့်တော်ခင်မျာ လူဖြစ် ရှူံးလူလုံးမလှ ခွေးလုံးလုံးဖြစ်နေရပါပြီလား။
Unicode Notes
Zawgyi, although widely used by many Burmese web sites, is sadly not compliant with the Unicode standard. Let's hope they will support Unicode 5.1 in their future version. This page from zawgyi.org describes which fonts are compatible with Unicode 5.1 standard.
The Burmese text above can be viewed by any of the standard-compliant Unicode fonts: PadaukOT, Parabaik, ParabaikSans, and Myanmar3. I have the download link for PadaukOT and Parabaik in the following list.
Here is the list of tools/software, which I used.
- Keyman 6.0.15 from Tavultesoft: Keyman Desktop is a keyboard mapping solution, designed with the user in mind.
- myWinE keyboard [Right click and "Save link as"] from thanlwinsoft.org and the layout: MyWinE is an extended keyboard implementing Myanmar and Sgaw Karen support in Unicode.
- PadaukOT and Parabaik fonts: download
Dec 23, 2007
George Orwell's 1984
I have been reading George Orwell's 1984. I am half way now. I want to share some quotes I like.
One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.
Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.
Orwell, in my opinions, probably wrote this fiction based on his experiences about the British colonial rule in Burma. Orwell used to live in Katha and Moulmein (Mawlamyine) while he was serving in the Indian Imperial Police. He hated imperialism and quit the job. He later pursued his writing career.
The book vividly describes the danger of being watched and brain-washed by a government. The main character, Winston Smith, works at the Records Department of a fictional country called Oceania. The department is responsible for producing records that are in line with the Party's agenda and deleting those that are not.
Here is the link to Wikipedia's article about the novel.
The following is the link to full text for "1984", "Animal Farm" and "Down and Out in Paris and London."
All of Orwell's work can be read free here.
More about George Orwell at Wikipedia.
I think 1984 is a good read, especially for the people under an authoritative government. I hope somebody translates this into Burmese.
