Myanmar (Unicode block)

Myanmar is a Unicode block containing characters for the Burmese, Mon, Shan, Palaung, and the Karen languages of Myanmar, as well as the Aiton and Phake languages of Northeast India. It is also used to write Pali and Sanskrit in Myanmar.

Myanmar
RangeU+1000..U+109F
(160 code points)
PlaneBMP
ScriptsMyanmar
Major alphabetsBurmese
Mon
Karen
Kayah
Shan
Palaung
Assigned160 code points
Unused0 reserved code points
Unicode version history
3.0 (1999)78 (+78)
5.1 (2008)156 (+78)
5.2 (2009)160 (+4)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note: [1][2]
Range used for Tibetan script prior to Unicode 1.0.1 (see Tibetan (obsolete Unicode block)).
Burmese unicode block

Block

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Myanmar[1]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+100x က
U+101x
U+102x
U+103x     
U+104x
U+105x
U+106x
U+107x
U+108x
U+109x
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0

The block has sixteen variation sequences defined for standardized variants.[3] They use U+FE00 VARIATION SELECTOR-1 (VS01) to denote the dotted letters used for the Khamti, Aiton, and Phake languages.[4] (Note that this is font dependent. For example, the Padauk font supports some of the dotted forms.)

Variation sequences for dotted forms
U+ 1000 1002 1004 1010 1011 1015 1019 101A 101C 101D 1022 1031 1075 1078 107A 1080
base code point က
base + VS01 က︀ ဂ︀ င︀ တ︀ ထ︀ ပ︀ မ︀ ယ︀ လ︀ ဝ︀ ဢ︀ ေ︀ ၵ︀ ၸ︀ ၺ︀ ႀ︀

History

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The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Myanmar block:

Historic and nonstandard uses of range

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In Unicode 1.0.0, part of the current Myanmar block was used for Tibetan. In Microsoft Windows, collation data referring to the old Tibetan block was retained as late as Windows XP, and removed in Windows 2003.[5]

In Myanmar, devices and software localisation often use Zawgyi fonts rather than Unicode-compliant fonts.[6] These use the same range as the Unicode Myanmar block (0x1000–0x109F), and are even applied to text encoded like UTF-8 (although Zawgyi text does not officially constitute UTF-8), despite only a subset of the code points being interpreted the same way. Zawgyi lacks support for Myanmar-script languages other than Burmese, but heuristic methods exist for detecting the encoding of text which is assumed to be Burmese.[7]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  2. ^ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  3. ^ "Unicode Character Database: Standardized Variation Sequences". The Unicode Consortium.
  4. ^ Hosken, Martin (2015-11-03). "L2/15-320: Proposal to Create Variation Sequences for Khamti Characters" (PDF).
  5. ^ Kaplan, Michael (2007-08-28). "Every character has a story #29: U+1000^H^H^H^H0f40, (TIBETAN or MYANMAR LETTER KA, depending on when you ask)". Sorting it all out.
  6. ^ Nagarajah, Sasha. "Zawgyi vs. Unicode". Global App Testing.
  7. ^ Loomis, Steven R.; Cornelius, Craig (2019). "Myanmar Scripts and Languages". Frequently Asked Questions. Unicode Consortium.