Indian computing?

[Anshuman Pandey]

On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Jacob Baltuch wrote:

> 1. Does anyone know of places on the net where I can find the various
>    official specs relevant to computing & Indian languages (ISCII, etc.)

Perhaps you could try finding these specification at the Unicode homepage:
<http://www.unicode.org>. I do recall seeing the ISCII specs somewhere,
but I can't remember the site off the top of my head. I'll dig around for
it and get the URL to you.

>
> 3. What's the 8-bit standard that has the characters needed for translit-
>    teration (letters with macrons, underdots, overdots, etc.)? (Incidentally
>    does Unicode make room for such characters? where do I find the Unicode
>    spec?)

There is no 8-bit "standard" for the transliteration of Indic script as
of yet. There is a working group of the International Standards
Organization which is currently developing a standardized 8-bit
transliteration. The working group is actually an electronic discussion
forum called "conv-dev". You can join the group by sending a subscribe
message to <majordomo at elot.gr>, with subject "subscribe conv-dev".

There is the Classical Sanskrit/Classical Sanskrit eXtended (CS/CSX)
8-bit encoding. The documentation and DOS screen drivers for CS/CSX are
found in the INDOLOGY archives in the file "iass_documentation.zip".

> 2. Is there a reference book for computing & Indian languages (I'm thinking
>    of something along to lines of what Ken Lunde's "Understanding Japanese
>    Information Processing" is for Japanese)

As far as I am aware there is no such text for Indian languages.

Regards,
Anshuman Pandey