23-08-2006, 11:47 AM
In short, Unicode is a character encoding mechanism in which every character is assigned a unique number, irrespective of the operating system or application. Each language's basic characters have their own distinct and unique character code values.
What this means with regard to fonts is that it is now possible to have one single font (say all-in-one.ttf) encompassing characters of very many different world languages.
If your text is communicated in Unicode, your WinXP/2K recipients need not have to install any Tamil font in their system prior to viewing your Tamil text
(For Win98 / ME systems -
Text communicated in unicode will be visible in Tamil in Win98/Me, only if there is atleast one unicode font (covering the Tamil range) in the system and only if the uniscribe processor (named usp10.dll) is present in the system.
Microsoft's Latha.ttf is a Tamil unicode font which gets installed automatically along with WinXP. You can find it in the 'c:\windows\fonts' folder of any XP installation. You may search on 'latha.ttf' in google and get to know further details. Arial Unicode MS is yet another font which covers the Tamil unicode range of characters.
The uniscribe processor (usp10.dll) might be present in some win9x systems already but one cant be sure whether its a compatible version. Typically, you obtain this processor (available in different versions) by becoming a member of the Microsoft Volt Users Community. Once you obtain this file, just save it in c:\windows\system and your system can show text in unicode without any problems whatsoever (unless otherwise the version of the usp10.dll you obtained is not the right one for your system). Usp10.dll is not a redistributable file and hence we cannot provide any download link for the same in azhagi.com. You may search on 'usp10.dll' in google and get to know further details.
Note : Win98 will become obsolete soon (though it might take quite a while in some parts of the world) and Microsoft's all future OS-es will obviously support unicode. So, it is time for you to look ahead and change your OS, if you can afford to.).
This paves way for data communication (in Tamil or any other language for that matter) and storage across computers to be as simple, straightforward and future-safe, as it is for English.
What this means with regard to fonts is that it is now possible to have one single font (say all-in-one.ttf) encompassing characters of very many different world languages.
If your text is communicated in Unicode, your WinXP/2K recipients need not have to install any Tamil font in their system prior to viewing your Tamil text
(For Win98 / ME systems -
Text communicated in unicode will be visible in Tamil in Win98/Me, only if there is atleast one unicode font (covering the Tamil range) in the system and only if the uniscribe processor (named usp10.dll) is present in the system.
Microsoft's Latha.ttf is a Tamil unicode font which gets installed automatically along with WinXP. You can find it in the 'c:\windows\fonts' folder of any XP installation. You may search on 'latha.ttf' in google and get to know further details. Arial Unicode MS is yet another font which covers the Tamil unicode range of characters.
The uniscribe processor (usp10.dll) might be present in some win9x systems already but one cant be sure whether its a compatible version. Typically, you obtain this processor (available in different versions) by becoming a member of the Microsoft Volt Users Community. Once you obtain this file, just save it in c:\windows\system and your system can show text in unicode without any problems whatsoever (unless otherwise the version of the usp10.dll you obtained is not the right one for your system). Usp10.dll is not a redistributable file and hence we cannot provide any download link for the same in azhagi.com. You may search on 'usp10.dll' in google and get to know further details.
Note : Win98 will become obsolete soon (though it might take quite a while in some parts of the world) and Microsoft's all future OS-es will obviously support unicode. So, it is time for you to look ahead and change your OS, if you can afford to.).
This paves way for data communication (in Tamil or any other language for that matter) and storage across computers to be as simple, straightforward and future-safe, as it is for English.
