Standardizing Sinhala for IT Part 4


Posted on August 22, 2006  /  204 Comments

Please continue your discussions on the above topic here. The previous thread is archived here.

204 Comments


  1. Has any one even try….

    to cut and paste with note pad into word and then into helawadane and/or Thibas? further into linux? Apple using the sinhala unicode or SLSI 1134

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  2. Im really appreciate the work you people done to get sinhala into IT world but i just wanna get something clear what kinda market is there for sinhala Unicode and sinhala based softwares?

  3. Sunday Leader will be carrying an article as to how notorious VKS sacked Dilanthe V and Manju H for his personal gains soon. Again, the article is based on the true facts found in this blog!!!!!! Poor Sam###### End is coming!!!!

  4. Dear Slim

    Out of the 19 million people more than 70% use Langauge Sinhala.
    Our Constitution specify that we have to do the work in Sinhala and Tamil Langusges

    If you visit part 3 and read the contents around No 103 where we have discussed your issue with JC Ahangama.

    Any way I will list again the areas where Computer is required to use the Sinhala language (incl Tamil ). The Text data has to be compatible across all platforms of operating system like the latin script. This cannot happen over here as the ISO or Unicode or SLSI is incorrect and incomplete.

    1. The Government officers
    2. The people in offices that have Internet connections
    3. The educated people in SL who have Internet connections (elaborate?)
    4. Student living abroad
    5. Pali users world over
    6. Those who are in the printing industry
    7. Those who want to communicate with their relatives/friends abroad
    8. Lawyers
    9. Notaries
    10. Scan documents for editable text (OCR)
    11. Banks
    12 Postal service
    13. Radio Stations / TV (Text to Voice)
    14. Data inputtung (Voice to text)
    15.Digital music composing
    16.GPS
    17.Hanicapped people
    18.Water and Harvest Management
    19.Accurate Election results
    20.Early detection of TAx evations (TAX dept filing of tax retuens using simple text format)
    21.Medical industry (voice) warning systems
    22. Toy industry
    23. Robot
    24.Issue of Certifiations
    25.Distant education
    26.Translations

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  5. Someone should start a string to discuss issues uncovered in this article I think….

    ICTA myths and tender frauds

    By Dilrukshi Handunnetti

    Overt manipulation and awarding of a tender to a Korean company with the Procurement Board of the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) choosing the highest bidder and paying Rs. 80 million extra for an e development programme has come to light.

    The story dates back to year 2003 when Minister Milinda Moragoda wished to undertake a massive e-Sri Lanka drive. The Korean government also wished to make a contribution towards the initiative but with the change of governments, the process hibernated for a while.

    Loan from Korea

    However, invitation for bids (IFB) was called when the government of Sri Lanka received a loan from the Export-Import Bank of Korea from the resources available at the Economic Development Co-operation (EDCF) of Korea.

    The specific amount received for this purpose was US$15 million (approx. Rs. 1,500,000,000) to finance Lanka Government Network (LGN) project of the e-Sri Lanka Development programme. At this point, the ICTA was selected as the implementing agency and the Cabinet Appointed Tender Board (CATB) on November 1, 2005 called for bids for the design, supply, installation and operation of Lanka Government Network (LGN).

    It was stated that LGN was a highly available, secure and reliable underlying information infrastructure backbone that would connect all the government organisations of the GOSL in a cost effective and secure manner. Initially, 350 locations were identified for connectivity in three phases.

    It was next announced that bidding would be according to International Competitive Bidding (ICB) procedures specified in the “Guidelines for Procurement Under the EDCF Loan, March 2005″ and Government Procurement Guidelines. It was open to all bidders from the Republic of Korea.

    Minimum qualifications

    It was announced that bidders should fulfil the minimum qualification criteria. This meant, the Management Service Provider (MSP) having a minimum of five years experience in the implementation and management of large-scale Wide Area Network (WAN) projects.

    Further, the MSP was to have experience in successful implementation of large scale managed network infrastructure projects with a project value exceeding US$ 10 million, experience in managing and co-originating various stakeholders and enjoying a total annual revenue of minimum US$60 million to establish financial credibility.

    A significant stipulation was the fact that the foreign MSP should have a local alliance/partnership so that the MSP will have legal liabilities for the project.

    Also, it was specified that the MSP should have a registered Sri Lankan business presence or have partners or consortium, operational with adequate staff for a minimum period of five years or more with a proven track record of providing respective managed services.

    For the two stage bidding process, a pre bid meeting was called on November 16, 2005 at the ICTA itself. Bids closed on November 30.

    At this point, a full-fledged consortium, Korean Telecom Network (KTN) submitted its bid for US$ 13.93 million, Samsung Networks Inc. for US 14. 82 million. The other bidder was Korea Exchange Banking Technologies (KEBT).

    According to ICTA sources, it was KTN that submitted a technically convenient bid complete with customers’ sites and survey preparations to the ICTA.

    Then Request For Proposal (RFP) was made and KTN submitted a comprehensive proposal with experts being flown in to the island to assist in mastering the technical aspects of the same.

    Manipulation

    Inside sources say that it was at this level, when evaluation of proposals commenced that serious manipulation began within the ICTA in stark violation of the tender procedures.

    In February last year, when a procurement clarification was sought from the ICTA, Procurement Advisor Christy Perera sent an e-mail response to Samsung titled “Inquiry about the second stage technical proposal format.”

    Samsung had first questioned whether a partnership and a joint venture would be considered one and the same, and next the difference between partners and sub contractors. “Are they the same or do they have different function/relationship?” the company queried, and Perera replied, “No, they are not the same.”

    Further, the clarifying mail sent by ICTA’s Procurement Advisor Perera stated that sub contractors were not involved in signing the contract but should be declared when the proposal is submitted.

    It has now transpired that despite the strong backing received, Samsung Networks did not even fulfil the minimum eligibility criteria specified by ICTA.

    According to the invitation for bids (IFB) of the e-Sri Lanka Development Project (IFBA; ICTA/GOODS/18) it was mandatory for the foreign Manage Service Provider (MSP) to have a local alliance or partnership to ensure that such MSP will have legal liabilities for the project.

    Criteria

    Similarly, the said MSP according to stipulated criteria should have a registered Sri Lankan business presence, or have partners or consortium operational with adequate staff for a minimum period of five years or more with a proven track record of providing respective managed services. Samsung did not possess the above two pre-qualifications, though they were able to go to the next level without being disqualified at the very outset.

    Other bidders now claim that the technical evaluations on both bidding stages were inaccurate and were full of malpractices which were geared towards granting the contract to an already selected company.

    It has now transpired that as per the technical evaluation criteria listed in the tender document, 12 marks were given to experience and expertise of ‘the local partner of the bidder’ whereas Samsung did not actually have a local partner.

    The Sunday Leader has reliably learned that in the case of Samsung Networks bid, the 12 marks have been given to subcontractors and not the local partners. (See document)

    Not only that, there were other misrepresentations at the technical evaluation. The ineligible company had also received two marks given to the bidders’ experience in implementing Economic Development and Co-operation Fund of Korea (EDCF) projects though Samsung Networks has not implemented any EDCF funded projects. Nevertheless Samsung managed to secure full marks.

    There were other issues clouding technical evaluation.

    Investigations

    Our investigations have revealed that KTN had initially objected to the appointment and formation of a technical evaluation committee (TEC) in violation of government stipulated tender guidelines which fell on deaf ears. KTN had objected on the basis of a public finance circular issued by Treasury Secretary P. B. Jayasundera.

    The objection was that according to clause 33.1 of the Procurement Guidelines (as amended by the Public Finance Circular No. 352/10), there was a defect in appointing Chairman, ICTA Prof. V. K. Samaranayake to participate/represent technical evaluation committee of the ICTA itself.

    Jayasundera’s public finance circular issued to all secretaries of ministries, heads of government departments, corporations and statutory boards cautioned them against the inclusion of chief executive officers of such organisations in TEC, as it would undermine the role of other TEC members.

    Referring o Chapter 111 of the Guidelines of Government Tender Procedures (revised edition August 197) regarding the appointment of TEC members, Jayasundera instructed that, “the members of the TEC should feel free to express their independent views and make recommendations to the Tender Board. In this context, the inclusion of chief executive officers (managing director, general manager, chairman etc.) of organisations in TEC tend to undermine the role of other members of TEC drawn from the same organisation. Therefore, you are kindly requested to refrain from nominating or appointing such officers to TEC.” (See document )

    Samsung secures bid

    What is more, it has now transpired that Samsung has managed to secure the bid despite furnishing misleading information for technical evaluation purposes. This despite tender documents specifying ‘misrepresentation of information’ being a fraudulent practice which could disqualify a bidder.

    According to instructions issued to bidders, what is termed a ‘fraudulent practice’ is “a misrepresentation of facts in order to influence a procurement process or the execution of a contract to the detriment of the borrower and includes collusive practices among bidders (prior to or after submission of bids) designed to establish bid prices at artificial, noncompetitive levels and to deprive the borrower of the benefits of free and open competition.”

    Under this stipulation however, it is possible to reject a proposal or to declare ineligibility, either indefinitely or for a stated period of time. However, none of the above occurred in respect of Samsung Networks despite the gross misrepresentations.

    Accordingly, Samsung Networks in their answers to clarifications raised by the ICTA at the first stage of LGN bid evaluation, brazenly declared Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) as their ‘local partner.’ Interestingly enough, the TEC had given full marks for the local partner acting on the basis that SLT was indeed a local partner of Samsung whereas it was only a subcontractor.

    When questioned on the nature of the local presence of Samsung Networks, the company response was in fact a laugh. In a written clarification Samsung said, “once we are awarded this project, we will set up our office and our staff from Korea will be based in Colombo office. Our office in Colombo, local partners and sub contractors will collaborate for the successful implementation and operation of LGN.”

    Local partner

    Having stated that, Samsung added, “our principle partner is Sri Lanka Telecom. MIT, Metropolitan, Softlogic and Advantage Technology will be involved in implementation and operation in some degree.”

    When the bidding process reached second stage whereupon bidders are required to produce their partnership agreements and financial reports, Samsung Networks also managed to alter their original position and declared that they in fact do not have any local partner fearing disqualification at this stage.

    What baffles ICTA insiders themselves is as to why the TEC chose to ignore all the gross misrepresentations, misleading statements and tender procedure violations in this manner. While bidders may try, as they often do, all the tricks in their books, ICTA officials themselves are baffled by the fact that the TEC did not outrightly reject the Samsung bid, but instead lent every possible support for the company to secure the bid.

    When subsequent objections were raised against SLT being principal local partner of Samsung and a subcontractor with another, SLT quickly disassociated itself from the Samsung partnership claim. Instead, it wrote to Chairman, CATB, stating its position.

    In a letter dated November 28, 2005, Chief Marketing Officer, Sri Lanka Telecom, Kapila Chandrasena announced a partnership with Enterprise Technology (Pvt) Ltd.

    More problems

    The Samsung bid however encountered more problems than the above. The two stage procurement guidelines were not properly implemented and followed by the ICTA itself. Other competitors allege that if the bidders were acting according to the tender guidelines of the government, the price bid should have been opened only after the completion of the technical evaluations.

    At this point, ICTA, it is learned had requested the bidders to include the total price in their technical proposals for Stage 2 bidding purposes.

    However, such treatment was not meted out to other competitors. When KTN made representations seeking clarifications from ICTA, not even minutes of the meeting were released to KTN. What is more, the company was also requested to alter their technical solution at this point, according to ICTA insiders.

    Naturally, when the matter reached the next stage — it led to the more technically advanced and superior solutions proposed by KT Networks to be rejected without any valid reasons being provided.

    KTN’s proposal was a state of the art satellite solution to connect all the 350 government-building locations. Considering the fact that most of the locations happened to be in remote areas, the company’s belief was that satellite communication facility was the most viable and suitable method for deploying high bandwidth connections.

    Rejected

    What was more, ICTA was to gain the additional benefit of coming to own the equipment. However, for no apparent reason, the solution was rejected and was told to work out a ‘land line’ solution. ICTA inside sources associated with the process confirmed that Samsung Networks Inc. had proposed only a landline solution.

    When the final marks were announced, KTN objected and sought a revision in the marks. The grouse the company has is that if the revision was done according to the stipulated marking system, KTN should have secured the highest marks and naturally become the more eligible bidder to win the contract for the project. What is more, marks were verbally announced and were not in writing.

    In this highly questionable backdrop, CATB approved Samsung’s proposal and rejected the other two. Following representations made to higher authorities, on May 17, 2006, President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga wrote to KT Networks announcing the disqualification of the company to secure the tender. However, it allowed an opening for the company to make representations to the Procurement Appeal Board (PAB).

    On May 20 this year, Manager, NI Business Marketing Division, Overseas Business Development Department, KT Networks, Yong Jin Kim formally submitting an appeal drew the PAB’s attention to the irregularities in the tender evaluations and even the fraudulent practices.

    Irregularities

    Kim whilst highlighting several major irregularities also questioned the eligibility of Samsung Networks, alleging that if the evaluation was just and impartial, KT Networks was of firm belief that the contract should have been awarded to them.

    “If the evaluation had been just and impartial, we believe that we should have obtained the highest marks for the technical evaluation. Further, our price bid was substantially less than that of Samsung Networks. If the evaluation has been accurate and impartial, we would have got the recommendation which eventually would save a significant amount of money for the Government of Sri Lanka.

    We earnestly request your fair and just evaluation of the representations we are making against the award and recommend our bid which we believe is the technically most compliant and lowest in price.”

    Having charged processing fee of Rs. 50,000, PAB did not offer a valid explanation for such rejection, according to angry ICTA insiders.

    After such a fiasco of manipulating marks and violating tender procedures to ensure success for one bidder, to this date, the tender remains un-awarded, a fact a source from the CATB confirmed. What is more, the ICTA also agrees that though Samsung secured the bid, contract is yet to be granted and says no more.

    The loss to the state is in the range of Rs. 80 million with the selection made, but no matter. KTN and KETB have been unfairly evaluated only to award the tender to the highest bidder. It really must be a sign of a wealthy state, albeit the expenses of war.

    Then again, here is a topic that comes directly under President Mahinda Rajapakse himself.

    ICTA says…

    Speaking to The Sunday Leader, a top ICTA official said that the contract was not awarded to any company yet.

    He said that there were no irregularities in deciding to issue the contract and admitted that the tender process had ended.

    “The cabinet has decided to give the contract to Samsung Networks, but it has not been awarded yet. Some parties allege that there are irregularities in deciding as to whom the contract should have been awarded to. But the procedure adopted was perfectly fine and there was no irregularity as alleged,” he said.

    He said that Samsung Networks had in fact quoted a lesser price than the other company, Korean Telecom Networks (KTN).

    “The amount quoted by the company is not known at the moment, but the amount was certainly less than the amount bid by Korean Telecom Network,” he added.

  6. HeWhoMustNotBeNamed

    Sunday Leader should be commended for bravely exposing this fraud, which other media would not have dared. However, this is only a part of the story – the tip of the ice berg. There is more to this.

    The Korean firm, Samsung has taken an interest in the Sri Lankan computer market at least for 5-6 years, even before e-Sri Lanka program was launched. However, they became active only during the last 3 years.

    There first contact was a key politician from the then UNP government. (Now crossed over to other side) This contact was of not much use to Samsung, as even after generous bribes the politician could not deliver any results.

    After the e-Sri Lanka was launched and ICTA established, Samsung repeatedly tried to bait high officials. They tried to build contacts with both Mr. Lalith Weeratunge and Mr. Wasantha Deshapriya but being honest government officials, both these did not fall to Samsung’s trap.

    That was when somebody brought Prof. Samaranayake to the picture. Samaranayake was then trying his best to be the ICTA Chairman and Samsung saw a good opportunity in building a good business relationship with him. They had several business lunches at some of the posh Korean restaurants in Colombo. Then a deal was struck.

    To cut a long story short, it was Samaranayake who introduced Samsung to a then not so powerful, but still important VIP politician. Interestingly, the close family members of this politician later locally represented Samsung in this infamous deal.

    Some things are better remain unsaid, so let me cut the story here. Sorry. My job is more important to me.

    What is important is that Samaranayake is only a small fish (hal messa) in this game. His job was to ensure that Samsung gets the deal. As a return, he was given the assurance to retain current position at ICTA for few more years. Without anything to lose, Samaranayake has agreed to play this role. It suits his plans. His son is still studying in US and a tuition fee is not low.

    What needs to be done now is to find the big fish (thoras and moras) behind this fraud, leaving poor old Samaranayake alone.

    In any democratic society, that is the job of the opposition too. However, in our country we have such a weak opposition that the entire responsibility falls in the shoulders of media. Let us hope they do a good job, without yielding to the influences of the VIPs.

  7. Are you trying to say that prof is very innocent hal messa here. With his proven track record I think he is the BIGGEST FISH in this game.

    You are trying to save the prof it seems.

  8. Today we are unable to use Sinhala correctly across all platforms of Operating systems registering an incomplete and incorrect set of Sinhala characters in the SLSI or ISO or Unicode , the legal problems regarding the DOT LK, DOT LK , are done by this individual and his group.

    Even though these problems have been taken up by the media several times all fell into the deaf ears of the public.

    The problem in Sri Lanka is the public never take national issues as their own ones. They expects someone else to fight and solve it. This is an attitude problem.

    There are many people with better knowledge in the IT but nobody consult them. They too live in a nut shell and scared to leave this shell.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  9. Pied Piper of Hamelin

    Nursery Rhymes of our times

    ONE

    Samsung, Samsung
    Have you any Won*

    Yes Sir, Yes Sir
    Three bags full

    One for the master
    One for his dame
    The last one for Prof. Sam
    Who took all the pain

    TWO

    Are you sleeping – Are you sleeping
    Kabir Hashim – Kabir Hashim**
    We need action – We need action
    Tick tuck tick – Tick tuck tick

    ———————————-
    * – Currency used in South Korea
    * – Somebody who made a big fuss about 92, but so far keeping silence about 1,500.

  10. Today I met few friends
    Some do read this blog

    There advice is to publish more on news papers other than Sunday Leader.
    Like in Island and Wijaya Group

    Since there are many segments in ICT — all are affected by the Dino

    why not publish it on these News papers too

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  11. Donald, your frends are right. Dino has already convinced the authorities that the article published was “part of Lasana W’s propaganda against Mahinda Chinthanaya” and Dino is to get another raise in his carreer after this.

    WHat a wonderful country.

  12. should be corrected as,

    “part of Lasantha W’s propaganda against Mahinda Chinthanaya”

    To remove the false skin and show the real skin of Dino, these articles should go to Sinhalese and English national newspapers.

    Magazines like Pariganaka made this guy a hero some time ago. Hope those mags have the courage to tell the truth to their readership now.

  13. I think you will understand that it is not wise to rate every innocent selfish and liar into this label but “in some specific cases” this is the only key to understand.

    http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER/20traitsofmalignantnarcissism.msnw

  14. Wow!

    This blog has moved to the 4th page and its all politics.

    Here’s a simple calculation:
    A standard static web site: 55 MB 15% transit overhead = 64MB
    DS1 (2-pairs copper wire) line bandwidth of ISDN-BRI: 128 kbps
    Time taken to travel using full bandwidth: 512 seconds = 8.5 minutes

    The bid fisaco is interesting. But what is this Government Network for? What is it going to do? You have FAST connections between 300 odd places and what is going to fly so fast among these places? It seems as if there’s so much data needing exchange. I could not get replies to email messages from companies or government agencies including ICTA for years. (The messages are still with me to show to posterity).

    Don’t you think we need to know what we are going to do with such a vast high-tech network? The speed at which people respond, you could have a nice courier service between the government offices. (Reminds me of the best network of delivery I saw anywhere in the world which was the bicycle lunch delivery service of the eighties. Please give Lankans the freedom to innovate).

    Who is going to write the applications? What languages? Sinhala / Tamil / English. At the rate Unicode is implemented world over, UTF-16 Sinhala would languish in the island for years to come. The guys are still groping in the IT darkness. I know, I know, the World bank said it is necessary. That report predates World bank president Paul Wolfowitz. The new person in charge of Sri Lanka was just appointed. She would have to revise all these if Paul is the guy I think he is.

    My humble opinion is that if the government wants a network it should use the services of the local ISPs. Even the US government uses the public network. Use VPN if security is required. Let the local companies sell the connections to the government. Again may I ask, why a private network for the government? This is unheard of in the rest of the world.

    We still have the failed mentality of yesteryear when we built massive paper factories because the communists said that’s the way for self sufficiency. Why can’t we do things in humble practical ways? Leasing private lines is a past thing in the west because you can have guaranteed bandwidth service on the public network. Let the government pay a higher rate to buy guaranteed speed. the ISP’s can configure networks to give priority to the government traffic if there’s anything that needs split second transmission.

  15. Who is going to write the applications? What languages? Sinhala / Tamil / English.

    This is a good question JC.
    When we are unable to send a Sinhala E mail across all platforms on OS’s
    the Sinhala unicode is lacking codepoints for all sinhala characters
    like the Pied Piper of Hamelin on 9
    These guys are interested only on funding and spending.

    I met a person yesterday.
    I gave my presentation.
    Lets see the outcome

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  16. JC says:

    [Reminds me of the best network of delivery I saw anywhere in the world which was the bicycle lunch delivery service of the eighties. Please give Lankans the freedom to innovate.]

    JC,

    I agree with you. The bicycle lunch delivery service of the 70s and 80s is not only one of our own innovations but it was extremely efficient and relaiable as well.

    Why?

    Because it was something developed to meet a market demand without any regulation. Imagine whether it would have been possible if govt. decided to plan and implement such a thing?

    I do not know whether anyone has observed, but a similar operation is happening in case of school vans. The vans swap/exchange students in the mid way, just like the lunch carriers exchanged lunch packets.

    All this have become possible because they have left to grown on themselves. The school van services still operate efficiently and successfully, because govt. has not put its hands to it. (eg. transport, petroleum, education, banking etc)

    In Sri Lanka, the moment the govt. puts its hand to something , that will be the end of it.

    e-Sri Lanka was supposed to be a model to which all players, i.e. the public sector, private sector and civil society was supposed to contribute. However it has ended up as another pure-government model without any sufficient contribution from the other two players. Now it has become another People’s Bank or CEB.

    VGKs were supposed to work on the franchise mode. Now it operates in the charity mode. Govt. gives equipment to operators on charity. Nothing new. Something Sarvodaya has been doing for ages.

    e-Sri Lanka was also supposed to create an environment for the private sector to grow. It never did. Now ICTA has lost the credibility of private sector.

    In short, whatever its initial objectives ICTA has ended up as another CINTEC. Perhaps the only difference is the extension of the scope. Other than that, ICTA has failed to introduce even a single new business model. It is no more private sector or market friendly than CINTEC was.

    P. S. I agree there were other external factors which was the reason behind.(like the change of a market friendly govt. to a statist one) However we want a program like e-Sri Lanka to something new. Not to do the things in the same traditional manner, any government office does.

  17. Concerned says IT magazines like Pariganaka did lots of work to make Dino a hero. I totally agree with him. Pariganaka magazine ran so many articles eulogizing this guy as if Dino was the grand father of the Pariganaka editor.

    In addition to Pariganaka magazine, ‘Antharjalaya Obe Gedarata’ rupavahini program and Vidusara science newspaper were the reasons for the rise and rise of Dino. Otherwise he is nobody. His computer knowledge is limited to using word, email and PowerPoint. Even he cannot make a decent presentation using PowerPoint.

    Dino’s principle for hierarchy is very simple. The oldest and the senior most ones gets to the top whether they are competent or not. The young has to wait till they get old for their turn. This is the system followed in the Sri Lankan Universities and government departments. Dino too is fully used to this system. He thinks it is his utmost duty to prevent anything happens beyond this golden system, he is so used to.

    We are very luck we did not have somebody like Dino is Telecom Malaysia. Had there been a guy like Dino there, Dr. Hans Wijesuriya would never have been able to become the Dialog CEO at the young age of 28 years. Dino would have definitely appointed somebody more than 55 years old for the post.

    When Dr. Lalaith Gamage started the SLIIT, Dino did his best to block it, because according to Dino’s books appointing somebody less than 50 years to lead an organization is nothing short of a criminal offence. They have to given opportunity to senior and older people and wait for their turn.

    For the journalists at Pariganaka and Vidusara Dino was somebody more important than Vinton Cerf, Tim Beneres Lee and William Shockley. Given half the chance they would have established it was Dino who invented the Internet. Their stupid reader would even have believed it.

    Finally I will be very surprised if anyone less than 50 years becomes the CEO of ICTA.

  18. Talk. talk, talk talk. Guys, I am back!

    ANNOUNCEMENT:

    Sinhla Smart Font Sumangala.ttf is available for download at:
    http://www.lanandwan.com/smartfonts/

    Sumangala could be installed in *Windows 2000* and *Windows XP* all versions. So, you can pay me the money you saved to buy Windows Vista. Save it for me, my friends. (By the way, did you see the prices of Vista?)

    Sumangala does not need Complex script support files or any beta software — the font is the only thing that’s incomplete. It is a test font that we invite you to use and help develop nice orthographic models of the different applications of this grand old language of ours. This is a PUBLIC effort. Janaþaa vyaapaarayak (scary Sinhala, eh?)

    The WorldPad (

  19. Well, something happened and half of my message got chopped off.

    “Try and try again boy, you will win at last”:

    The balance:

    WorldPad word processor by SIL International shows Sinhala perfectly. You can type Sinhala and English intermixed in a document by simply changing the font. No need to remember completely different keyboard layouts. We have a special romanized Sinhala keyboard definition for speed-typing Sinhala which is still useable for English. (I know some of you guys don’t need Sinhala having arrived up there and kicked the ladder off).

    Well, try it out and rip me apart!

  20. Sampath,

    Glad to know you, my child. Try the font and tell me what you think of a totally private effort that defies bureaucratic thinking (including corporate thinking).

  21. Article 17 says ” ….Pariganaka magazine ran so many articles eulogizing this guy as if Dino was the grand father of the Pariganaka editor.”

    It is apperent that the Pariganaka Editor also is a staffer in LirneAsia. Hope we can hear some explanaition from him regarding why he made a false figure a national hero making a reputed magazine a third class rag.

  22. It appears that James Bond needs his license revoked.

    None of LIRNEasia’s full-time or part-time personnel (we are not a conventional organization with “staffers”) are involved in editing Pariganaka. I occasionally assist the magazine when they ask, and will continue to do so.

  23. Wasn’t Chanuka Wattegame an editor of Pariganaka during the time refered in the two mails.???? Has he got anything to say on this?

  24. Lunch delivery sevice in India is called “Dabbawalas”. They have an association in Bombay and do have about 5000 lunch deliverymen. They have a web site and text messaging system to take orders……you can get more by searching the web for the word “Dabbawalas”

    Where are we today? Before JCA went to USA even in Lanka had this delivery system. I do not think today we have more than one or two. Or may be none.

    Sampath talks about Children are swap like DHL parcels in Vans. When the children live within two mile range from schools why do we need so many Vans to carry them. This is another hypocrisy in Lanka.

    Sri Lanka is a land of double standards. None of the foreigners will be able to understand. We have a Dino at every corner on every subject. Society makes them grow but when they are out grown the same society is terrified to chop them down.

    Hope you will answer the 1 and 18

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  25. This is a Nenasala centre in a main city. There are few other more expensive cybercaafe’s too.

    Same story here too.

    Just two PCs for Internet! Internet link seems regularly shut down as people come here only for typesetting , etc……

    Virus guards are not updated and the PC is full of viruses. Aho Mahinda Chinthanya, sorry, VK Chinthanaya… or Moragda chinthanaya….

  26. No messnger programs installed. PCs look like never been used as they are in good conditions.

    How many other deserving projects in Sri Lanka without having any access to Internet???? This is government money going into waste.

  27. Tried to download Yahoo but it doesnt work. Staff doesnt know anything about Yahoo messenger!!!

  28. Pardon my ignorance, but what is this Nenasala?

    Is it:
    nenasala = [Rom. Sinhala] neenasæla
    = [English] the place to which you should not go / the place that doesn’t come(?)
    or
    nenasala = [Rom Sinhala] µænasæla
    =[English] the place of knowledge.

    A person who still uses Sinhala would see how much we care about the language when we go and Anglicize Sinhala. There’s a way to respect your grand parents by at least adopting a romanizing scheme that respects the Sinhala sound set.

  29. Reading the messages again it seems like Nenasala is a chain of Cyber cafés.

    message 27 is very evealing. The Internet access is very slow — must be a dialup connection. These places should get DSL access. DSL is cheap to implement. Somebody setup a business to implement this (and get me down if you have no clue. I’ll show how easy it is). You need only regular (existing) telephone lines for this blessed thing.

    JC
    Texas, USA

  30. Dear JCA

    Nanasala are places similar to a cyber cafe done with the ICTA funding.
    They have one in Fort railway station I have not been: wanted to go but the prevaling situvation bars me to travel to places like that. I do not want to do research and lose a limb or eye sight.

    They do all these activity without correct & proper Sinhala!!!

    If we had correct sinhala the development will be a chain reaction they are scared of this.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  31. JCA, Must have been some time since you moved to Texas. Only SLTL has copper loops (the obsolete condition limiting Suntel and Lanka Bell to wireless local loops has not yet been removed); around 900,000, mostly in Western Province. That’s the precondition for ADSL. Another precondition is adequate backhaul.

    ADSL was first offered in Sri Lanka in 2003. But patchy even in the Western Province. As late as 2005, factories in the Biyagama Zone could not get ADSL because the exchanges were not so equipped.

    Just recently, SLTL started offering ADSL along the southern coastline; this is after the new optical fiber was commissioned. But even in Colombo, they cannot give the speeds they promise because of inadequate attention paid to dimensioning the network.

    So your prescription is unlikely to work in most places where ICTA is putting its Nenasalas.

  32. On the first round I missed the ADSL connection and was given only March 2006 had to wait until new optical fiber cable was commissioned & upgrade the exchange.
    Speed supposed to be 512 but yet very slow.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  33. JC,

    As you are in US seems like you have not heard about nenasala which is a ICTA initiative. However, they have a website now http://www.nenasala.lk/

    I dont know whether this is a success or a faliure however I found something extremly interesting which is related to topic in discussion.

    What I found out recently after going through this site is that there is plethora of local language content. Goto http://www.nenasala.lk and click the Icon Open Enrich and you can see various content hubs. Go to one of the hubs and select Sinhala language you will see many content. However they are all in Sinhala Unicode. Further these content seems to be develped by respective nenasala’s. I manage to read a very interesting story never heard before about ANDARE “රජ වාසලේ කවටයා නොහොත් අන්දරේ”, over here.

    Further all this local content is accessible irrespective of platform/OS as long as you have Sinhala Unicode.

    Another best way to see content now is to do a google search in Sinhala Unicode you will see so many sinhala content pages popping up.

    So things are progressing when people still speculate the myth that sinhala unicode is incomplete and sinhala is destroyed.

    Harsha

  34. Harsha,

    [quote]
    What I found out recently after going through this site is that there is plethora of local language content.[unquote]

    I find some English content and some Tamil content, but no Sinhala content at all. When I select ‘Sinhala’ all I see is lots of garbage. (Some squares) I see the same squares in your posts too in third paragraph.

    Since when we started using squares as Sinhala characters?

    The following are the ONLY sites with Sinhala content I have seen so far:

    http://www.lankadeepa.lk
    http://www.lankaenews.com
    http://www.sricolama.com

  35. Quote
    So things are progressing when people still speculate the myth that sinhala unicode is incomplete and sinhala is destroyed.
    Unquote

    There is no myth just go to
    http://www.unicode.org/charts
    Download the Sinhala pdf file and see yourself

    Where is “DU” “KU” “GU” etc

    Give the codepoints in unicode for these

    What Sri Lanka registered with unicode is incorrect and incomplete set of Sinhala Characters

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  36. quote
    රජ වාසලේ කවටයා නොහොත් අන්දරේ translasion “Joker in the Palace alias Andare”
    unquote

    Above quoted from 33 “about ANDARE”

    When you go to http://www.nenasala.lk select the language Sinhala or Tamil you get “”COMING SOON” as of Sept 4, 2006

    You can now see who is the joker in the palace or the joker in the office of the president

    Please do not fool the public

    Donald Gaminitillkae
    Colombo

  37. Dharma,

    You will see text boxes till you switch to Vista with LIP enabled, as you are not keen to install anything downloaded. If you download and install the Sinhala Unicode pack in your XP you will be able to read all the Sinhala Unicode content. The sites you highlighted use embedded font technologies to ensure irrespective of fonts, the viewers see the content.

    Donald,
    As per ANDARE Story, it’s quite pity how you manipulate my post as you have not read it clearly. You need to goto nenasala.lk and then click Open Enrich Icon which appears and go to one of the content hubs which are content created by various nenasala’s. You can read ANDARE to many more and you will be surprised to see so much of local language content created by various regions.

  38. Harsha,

    So many sites claim they offer Sinhala content. The latest is Prof. Nalin De Silva’s http://www.kalaya.org.

    All of them want me to download different sets of fonts and install them in my PC. So at the end I will have to download more than 10 types of proprietary fonts including Unicode fonts.

    No, thanks. I will wait till there is a single standard.

    By the way there are many like me, who do not want any of these proprietary fonts.

    Some write in roman characters. eg http://technobatta.blogspot.com/2006/09/varsity-kavi-part-ii.html

    Others convert their writings to jpeg. eg http://www.bodhini.s5.com/

    Both these are not 100% perfect, but better than looking at set of empty squares.

  39. I talk of the basic index page
    Kindly answer why it get listed as “Coming Soon”

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  40. Harsha Puraasinghe

    I downloaded the sinhala pack and went to the website referred to by you,

    “You need to go to nenasala.lk and then click Open Enrich Icon which appears and go to one of the content hubs which are content created by various nenasala’s. ”
    Web was sinhala characters.
    But when I copy the text from the web to Adobe illustrator it doesn’t show sinhala characters even though I have down loaded the sinhala pack.
    Can you tell me the reason?

  41. Quote from 37
    then click Open Enrich Icon which appears
    unquote

    The Sinhala is restricted to a certain OS only. The content is not compatible with all operating systems and it is contradicting the basic of Unicode

    Quote from unicode
    What is Unicode?
    Unicode provides a unique number for every character,
    no matter what the platform,
    no matter what the program,
    no matter what the language.
    Unquote

    Your “Sinhala unicode” is incorrect and incomplete system.

    Your http://www.nansala.lk is just a site to fool the public like an ad for a screen film “Coming SOON”

    The public can now decide who is the modern “Andare”

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  42. Samarajiva;

    Thank you for explaining.

    But then running fibre lines from the Telco to the subscriber is prohibitively expensive. They gave it up here years ago. Besides DSL, cable, satellite together are delivering pretty well on the last mile. (Not all places can have DSL because we still have 26 guage copper on the network that the Telcos are supposed to upgrade — at least in Texas. They do it only if we complain to Public Utilities Commision which does magic).

    I thought Sri Lanka pretty much has all data grade copper all over the country since the upgrade in the 1970s.

    What do you know about that?

  43. I think I should start writing some juicy stuff in romanized Sinhala for you guys to start thinking that way.

    Then I can ask you to try the font that shows Sinhala with no manging of the computer.

  44. I meant to say ‘no mangling’

  45. Romanized Sinhala:
    mama iÐagena inna þæna janeelayen peenavaa paare gæænu ada niruvaþen ðuvanavaa. ekiyak..(to be continued)

  46. JCA,

    I did not say anything about FTTH. There is no copper in most of the country. There is no fiber in the backbone.

    Upgrade in the 1970s? What upgrade?

    The Department of Posts and Telecommunications was one of the most inept and corrupt organizations known to man. In 1991, when it was converted to Sri Lanka Telecom, it had 125,000 lines in the entire country. Now there are around over one million fixed lines, with around 900,000 being copper.

    65% of these lines are in the Western Province.

    It sure ain\’t like it\’s in Texas, is it? For data, google should help, but one of my recent columns in LBO had some provincial breakdowns (http://www.lbo.lk/insight_fullstory.php?newsID=222878524&no_view=1&SEARCH_TERM=24). Or go to one of the sources: the TRC (http://www.trc.gov.lk/statistics.htm).

  47. http://www.nanasala.lk index page has been developed by Kothmale radio group

    When you see the “”contents””” it has two groups one Crimson logic and open world (open enrich)
    Open world could have develop the sinhala standard. Then implement the content development
    Any way all these work could have done by the Kothmale radio group as they were the leading gruop that have done the index page.

    After doing all this why they have not developed the Sinhala and the Tamil pages?

    How much funds were wasted by (Open eNRICH v4.0 developed by National Informatics Centre, Government of India in collaboration with UNESCO and OneWorld International Foundation.) doing web sites that cannot be accessed by all operating system and on a concept byond the basics of Unicode Inc and Internet.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  48. Good news for software developers

    ICT Research and innovation grants

    Please address your queries to
    Project Director or Project Manager

    icta.icbp@lk.pwc.com

    Telephone 471-9838

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  49. Read Mawbima’s ICT Adawiya supplement. This has got some more revelations regarding how ICTA was formed and what went wrong (and right.) Hope Dino will have his own place in this supplement as well.

  50. We think Dino is so powerful and everybody in Sri Lanka knows him. But it is not so.

    There are some people in Sri Lanka who does not know Dino. Surprisingly, one such person is the web master of the Computer Society in Sri Lanka.

    See http://www.cssl.lk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=66&Itemid=84

    You will see Dino’s photo mis-captioned.

    Alas! Poor old Dino!!

  51. What happened Harsha de Silva’s TV show offer????? Harsha is a so called ‘economic advisor’ who run to TV stations to say all government mesures are wrong and he is right. Can any of you here tell me any productive thing this guy did to any field in Sri Lanka rather than boasting????

  52. I wrote an E mail to ICT Research and innovation grants on Sept 8th
    They have not even acknowledge the E mail I sent
    What more one can expect

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  53. 24 hrs have gone after the posting of No 50
    Yet it has not been corrected
    CSSL !!!!

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  54. Sri Lankan Chosen for ICANN

    A Sri Lankan, Mr. Jayantha Fernando has been selected by the ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to serve as a member of a panel of experts reviewing registry services. I believe this is a great honour for our fellow Sri Lankans. Who know may he’d help me set up my own domain. :)

    Here’s more about the dude : Taken off ICTA (Oh yes he’s a member of the ICTA too)

    Jayantha Fernando
    Legal Advisor

    Jayantha Fernando is an Attorney by Profession and holds a specialized Masters Degree in IT & Communications Law from the University of London, which he completed on a British Chevening Scholarship of the UK Government (2001-2003)

    He has extensive ICT Legal experience which spreads across Government and Private sector (both local and overseas), with exposure to several areas such as ICT Policy and Legal reforms, negotiating and drafting contracts for large ICT Projects, DNS, IP addressing & Internet resource management. As head of the eLaws program he played an active role in the formulation of the Electronic Transactions Bill, which was enacted by Parliament on 7th March 2006 and also helped in the preparation of the Computer Crimes Bill and addresses law enforcement requirements from 1996 todate. He is presently advising the adoption of a Data Protection Code of Practice.
    Jayantha leads several ICT Legal and professional development programs and has overseas experience lecturing and training policy makers and government officials on ICT Legal and regulatory issues. He is also a lecturer at Sri Lanka Law College, the University of Moratuwa and University of Colombo School of computing (UCSC).

    In 2005, he was selected to function as the Associate Chairman of the ICANN Nominating Committee and was invited to serve as a member for 2006. Recently he was selected to serve as a Member of the ICANN’s Standing Panel of Experts for the review of gTLD Registry services. Jayantha is a Board member of the Sri Lanka Standards Institution and also serves on the board of LK Domain Registry.

  55. It is nice to see Jayantha Fernando Legal Advisor being nominated

    What he could not solve in Sri Lanka how can he solve in other countries.

    ICTA has done an very unethical act by taking my Domain “AKURU” When I pointed this to Jayantha Fernando Legal Advisor in a public meeting he admitted that it is an unethical step but this problem cannot be solved in Sri Lanka as we have no laws yet. Everyting is partially done laws and work.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  56. Donald,

    Talk of the town is that you can get a .lk domain you crave for, “for an exchange”. Like Dino, Gihan D also said to be taking “little favors.”

  57. from http://www.nic.lk
    akuru.lk is registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    Payment Due Date: 2005-01-01

    So it is an expired Domain
    ICTA have no right to own it as ICTA have not paid the dues

    This is why I say “There is no equal access to justice in Sri Lanka”

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  58. “for an exchange”.“little favors.”

    What are these? be specific!!!!

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  59. As far as I know, LK Domain Registry is a non-government PRIVATE organisation operated by few PRIVATE individuals. It does not report to any ministry or any other government agency.

    The directors of this PRIVATE FIRM are,

    Gihan V. Dias
    T. Ashok Peiris
    Rohith Udalagama
    G. Harsha Wijewardhana
    V.K. Samaranayake
    Jayantha T. Fernando
    L.M. Chandana Weerasinghe

    (Source http://www.nic.lk)

    I have few questions.

    1) How come a national domain registry is maintained by a PRIVATE FIRM / set of PRIVATE individuals?

    2) How come the NIC breaks its own policies?

    Eg. NIC domain policies clearly say that a generic term cannot be a domain name.

    So how come the domains like http://www.island.lk, http://www.shop.lk, http://www.chamber.lk, http://www.garments.lk, http://www.climate.lk, http://www.microfinance.lk, http://www.access.lk, http://www.foss.lk, were given to non-governmental organisations? Does NIC think these terms are not generic?

    (I do not question the generic term domains given to govt. organisations such as http://www.army.lk, http://www.navy.lk and http://www.news.lk, which is understandable.)

    3) To whom the money paid for domain names goes? Does it go to the government or to an account of a PRIVATE individual? Are the NIC accounts audited by the government auditor or any auditing company?

    Can any of the above gentlemen please answer these two questions?

  60. Advise to Donald:

    No need to worry. You can obtain the domain name http://www.e-akuru.lk (e hyphen akuru dot lk)

    a) It reflects your concept best (even better than akuru dot lk)
    b) It is still available (I just checked.)
    c) You have the same advantages of having http://www.akuru.lk (eg. Anyone who searches for the term akuru will still get your site as a hit.)

    Now, run fast and register this name. Otherwise ICTA will register that too.

    Donald,

    Why do you always rant over these minor matters? If they block you in one way, think and find an alternative way. Of course, people will block you in this country. The positive response will be not complaining but finding another way.

  61. I just checked NIC site and found that in addition to http://www.akuru.lk, ICTA has also reserved its all sub domains including http://www.akuru.ngo.lk, http://www.akuru.com.lk, http://www.akuru.assn.lk and http://www.akuru.hotel.lk.

    Nobody can really blame ICTA for reserving http://www.akuru.lk, but reserving the sub domains too is taking things too far.

    As we all know, ICTA is not an NGO, association, commercial organization and definitely not a Hotel.

    So if tomorrow Simon Appuhamy mudalali of Akuressa wants to have a hotel called HOTEL AKURU, he will not be able to have a dot lk web site, because ICTA has reserved the domain name the mudalali rightly deserves.

    For a government organization I find this is a very unethical thing to do.

    It looks like the sole purpose of ICTA blocking these domain and sub domain names is blocking Donald from getting one. (Unless of course, Prof. V. K. Samaranayake wants to open a hotel called Akuru Hotel, perhaps next to an ICTA Nanesala)

    This is a very cheap act, and I suggest ICTA release this domain name asap, for anyone who wants to use it. (ICTA does not use it now. I do not think it has ever used it.)

    ICTA is a government organization and it should not waste public money like this (even if it is Rs. 5,000) to fight with individuals.

  62. Thank you Sangana for positive response

    Quote
    “Why do you always rant over these minor matters? ”
    Unquote

    These are not minor matters Rights of the public is violated by a group of people.
    I voice but others just give up
    In another country this group will be in jail.

    They do charge VAT but the VAT number is not published in the site — this is also a clear violation of TAX laws in Lanka.

    I wonder whether they ever filed a VAT return??

    Since ICTA have not paid the dues to akuru.lk domain I did asked Manju and the lawyer Jayantha to transfer the Domain but it went unanswered. I applied it to nic.lk but this request was never acknowledged or refused.

    This is why I say “There is no equal access to justice in Sri Lanka”

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  63. Donald,

    Now you have applied for the post of ICTA CEO, you should not tell things like that.

    Instead you should sing the praises of Dino, Gihan D and the rest of the gang. You should tell about the good work these people have done to the country, and where we would have been without them.

    Otherwise, do not blame us if you do not become the CEO.

  64. I applied for the job to do some work for the society.

    Also I should clear the confilcts of interests- Akuru Domain, my copyrights and my pending patent and thought of IT for rural economy.

    If you read Daily Mirror page A3 of Todays issue Sept 15,2006
    “Public sector to go bi-lingual” written by Yohan Perera
    “Children to be taught Sinhala and Tamil in Schools”

    When we are unable to use Sinhala in a computer across all platforms. all the Sinhala characters are not registered in the Unicode.

    They talk of 3T’s in teaching languages
    T Teaching
    T Text books
    T Technology – this is a total flop as we are unable to use bilingual (Sinhala & Tamil) across all platforms.

    Donald Gainitillake
    Colombo

  65. It is good that we have come to this subject because there are myriad of issues involved with the dot lk domain name registry.

    As Ms. Sandhya Herath correctly points out, all these are because the domain registry maintenance is under the name of one private individual. Although the name of University of Moratuwa appears in the http://www.nic.lk site, university of Moratuwa has nothing to do with dot lk domain registry. The day Dr. Gihan Dias leaves University of Moratuwa dot lk domain registry goes with him. Basically that is controlled by only two individuals. One is Dr. Dias and the other is Prof. V. K. Samaranayake. Both do this in their personal capacity.

    Domain name, like a telephone, a vehicle or a share of a company a commodity. It is not anything like an identity card. There is no rule that one should have only one domain name and that should be related to the business one does. One can purchase any number of telephones and similarly, any number of domain names. That is what happens at international level and in most of the other countries.

    The advantage of making domain names commodities is that itself becomes a business. One buys shares of an unknown company speculating that share price might rise one day and that pays for his investment. In a similar manner speculators usually register domain names of famous organisations with the idea of selling that to the respective companies in future. These speculators purchase hundreds and thousands of domain names, and that itself becomes a big business.

    However, our friends Dr. Dias and Prof. Samaranayake either do not have an iota of business sense or they purposely want to restrict the expansion of dot lk domain names.

    So they have put a condition that [quote] All applications must be forwarded with a clear justification for the reason of selecting the domain name. It should be accompanied with a declaration that the applicant is entitled to the name. [unquote] This obviously prevents all speculators.

    The money that the country loses, by the stupid action of these two IT-dictators is enormous. For example, if the policies are relaxed and if there is a proper procedure to register dot lk domain names the government can earn about Rs. 50 million for a year. (assuming 10,000 name registrations)

    If I were to use a common term used in this forum these IT-Dinosaurs are bane to the IT industry and bane to the nation. We can never develop the IT industry in Sri Lanka as long as we have such people in the top. There is a strong and immediate need to free the IT industry from this type of dinosaurs and give the responsibilities to young and dynamic players who have at least some sort of business sense.

  66. So Sandhya my ranting has given a another area where Dino is active.

    There are lots of Basic IT affairs has to put into correct path.
    I am raising my voice in these areas. Looks minor but grave issues

    The public has to voice more and more

    I am trying get some of these issues to raise with the babies in “Diyawanna oya”.
    Starting with Sinhala
    I have not taken this path but I will have to use to protect the language.

    Since the problem is at very elementary level it is very difficult to convince.

    Lets see the outcome

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  67. Which is Which

    Go to
    http://www.gov.lk/index.asp?xl=3
    and click President
    It will link to
    http://www.presidentsl.org/data/

    But again we have another site
    http://www.priu.gov.lk/execpres/Indexep.html

    The content differ
    Both sites are hosted by the Government of Sri Lanka

    When I check the gov.lk in the NIC

    Top Level Domain
    gov.lk is registered to LK Domain Registry
    Payment Due Date: 2005-01-01

    Second Level Domains
    gov.assn.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.com.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.edu.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.grp.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.hotel.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.ltd.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.ngo.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.org.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.soc.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka
    gov.web.lk registered to ICT Agency of Sri Lanka

    Domain priu.gov.lk is registered in the Sri Lankan Domain Registry for Presidential Secratariat
    Registration Agent: LKNIC

    Why should our president need a domain http://www.presidentsl.org/data/
    He can use the Domain priu.gov.lk registered to Presidential Secratariat

    Presidential Secratariat can have an archive for all ex presidents in Sri Lanka

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  68. We did a research project using the Standard Sinhala Unicode as our final year project Our project goal was to display sinhala in RSS feeds.
    What we did was we read the news paper web sites such as lankadeepa site through a web spider and trnaslated the ASCII values to Unicode accroding to the Unicode table for sinhala.
    To do the translation we developed an mapping algorithm using c# and from that algorithm we converted ASCII to Unicode.
    We used http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0D80.pdf to do our convertion.
    To view the RSS feeds in Sinhala we used Malithi web font which can be downloaded from http://www.fonts.lk

  69. Pasan,

    Can you please let us know from where I can get more information about this research? Are you a student of Moratuwa or Colombo University?

    I read Lankadeepa and Lankaenews sites frequently. Those sites do not need anybody to download fonts. One key issue I faced was the inability to cut and paste from those sites. I thought it was an inherent drawback of the system they use. Please educate us how that can be done.

  70. Is Lanka Bell using Unicode?

    SMALL TALK

    18 September 2006 15:27:48
    Lanka Bell re-brands SMS for Sinhalese, Tamil audiences

    Sept 18 (LBO) –Telco operator Lanka Bell said Monday it was re-branding its short message service through fixed line phones, to appeal to a wider audience.

    Users can send short messages over its fixed line phones using CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology, now called ‘Keti Katha’ for Sinhalese users, at a cost of 75 cents a message, Lanka Bell said in a statement.

    “The objective is to differentiate from the generic term. The short message service will be called Keti Katha for Sinhalese users and ‘kurum pechchu’ in Tamil for the Tamil community,” a spokesperson for the company, said.

    “We have a lot of users in the rural areas and the re-invented names will make them feel more at home when they use it.”

    Lanka Bell also has an email service over its fixed line phones. Customers can get an email address and an account set up on registration.

    Last year, the telecom operator rolled out an expansion plan to connect rural Sri Lanka using low cost CDMA technology on the 800 Mhz band.

    The investment has paid off rich dividends, with Lanka Bell’s customer base soaring by more than 90,000. A company official said subscriber base had now topped 300,000 following new investments of around 65 million dollars.

    Updated 19 Sept

  71. Dear Pasan

    The topic here is the Sinhala characters registered in unicode (what you had given)
    http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0D80.pdf
    is incomplete and incorrect

    Therefore all Sinhala characters are not represented in the Sinhala Unicode or SLSI1134

    If you know how to read Sinhala
    Please see the character “DU” in “Malithi ” and see whether that character is registered in the unicode

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  72. Hi Dharma,
    I am a SLIIT Malabe student.
    Our project goal was to give Sinhala News paper site news in RSS feeds in sinhala language.I don’t think that any news paper site provide sinhala rss feeds.

    Our project supervisor was Mr.Nuwan Kodagoda.You can contact him or me for further details.

    http://www.sliit.lk/Staff/Malabe_Academics.htm

  73. Dear Donald,
    Yes I agree with you.We couldn’t display all the sinhala characters from that table.
    This was a reserach project that we did for our final year. We got successfull may be 80%.

  74. Below is a sample rss feeds generated by our project.

    News update at Sinhala news papers
    http://www.sinhalarss.com/
    Sinhala News updations

    ෙපාලිස් අත්අඩංගුෙවී සිටි සැකකරැ අබිරහස් ෙලස මරැට ෙපාලීසිය ඇවිත් පහර දී මල්ලිව අරන් ගියා ෙසායුරිය පෑලියෙගාඩ ෙපාලීසිෙය් සිද්ධිය ගැන පරීෂණයක් – නි.ෙපාලිස්පති
    ගයාන් කුමාර වීරසිංහ, භක්ති ධර්මපුිය ෙමන්ඩිස්, අජිත් පුෂ්පකුමාර – කැලණිය නිෙවස්වල භාවිතා කරන රැහැන් සහිත දුරකථනයක් ෙසාරකමී කිරීම සමීබන්ධෙයන් පෑලියෙගාඩ ෙපාලීසිය මගින් අත්අඩංගුවට ගන්නා ලද සැකකරැවකු ෙපාලිස් අත්අඩංගුෙවීදී අබිරහස් ෙලස ඊෙය් (14) මියෙගාස් ඇත ෙමාහුට ෙපාලිස් අත්අඩංගුෙවී දී පහරදීමක් සිදුවී දැයි සැකයක් මතුවී ඇත ෙපාලිස් අත්අඩංගුෙවීදී සැකකරැවකු ම
    http://www.lakbima.lk/articles/news1.htm

    සුනාමි සහන මණ්ඩලයට ලැෙබන විෙද්ශ ආධාර මැතිසෙබී වගකීමට – මුදල් ඇමැති
    කමල් ලියනාරචීචි සුනාමි සහන මණ්ඩල කලාපීය අරමුදලට ලැෙබන විෙද්ශ ආධාර පාර්ලිෙමීන්තුෙවී වගකීමට ෙමන්ම විගණකාධිපතිවරයාෙග් අධීෂණයට යටත් වන බව මුදල් හා කුම සමීපාදන ඇමැති ආචාර්ය සරත් අමුණුගම මහතා පුකාශ කෙළ්ය. රජය එ් සමීබන්ධෙයන් ෙපෙර්දා (14 දා) අධිකරණයට කරැණු ඉදිරිපත් කළ බව ෙහෙතම පැවසීය. කැබිනටි තී
    http://www.lakbima.lk/articles/news2.htm

    හමුදා බස්වලට පහර දීමට සැකසු කි. 7 ක ක්ෙල්ෙමා් ෙබා්මීබයක් ෙසායා ගනී මරාෙගන මැෙරන ඇඳුමී කටිටලයක් ෙමන් සකස් කරලා
    තිස්ස රවීන්දු ෙපෙර්රා හමුදා ෙසබථන් නිවාඩු යන අවස්ථාවලදී ගමන් කරන හමුදා බස් රථ (“ලිබර්ටි”) වලට පහර දීෙමී සුදානමින් ෙගන ආ බවට සැකකරන මරාෙගන මැෙරන ඇඳුමී කටිටල ෙමන් සකස් කළ කිෙලා්ගුෑමී හතක ක්ෙල්ෙමා් ෙබා්මීබයක් මඩකලපුව, තිමිලතිවී පුෙද්ශෙය්දී හමුදා භට පිරිස් විසින් ෙපෙර්දා (14) රාතුී 8.00 ට පමණ ෙසායාෙගන ඇත. ෙමම ෙබා්මීබය විනාඩි 10 සහ ව
    http://www.lakbima.lk/articles/news3.htm

    යාන්තුණෙය් ජාතික කමිටුෙවී රජෙය් නිෙයා්ජිතයා ඩිවී
    කමල් ලියනාරචීචි සුනාමි සහන මණ්ඩල ජාතික කමිටුෙවී රජෙය් නිෙයා්ජිතයා ෙලස ව වස්ථා කටයුතු ඇමැති ඩිවී ගුණෙස්කර මහතා පත් කිරමට රජය තීරණය කළ බව කැබිනටි පුකාශක ෙඍඛ ෙපා්ෂණ හා ඌව ෙවල්ලස්ස සංවර්ධන ඇමැති නිමල් සිරිපාල ද සිල්වා මහතා පුකාශ කෙළ්ය. කැබිනටි තීරණ දැනුමී දීම සඳහා නාරාෙහ
    http://www.lakbima.lk/articles/news4.htm

    ෙමී වසෙර් ජනපතිවරණය රනිල් දකින සිහිනයක් – ෛමතුීපාල සිරිෙස්න
    කමණි ෙහටිටිආරචීචි ෙමී වසෙර් ජනාධිපති වරණයක් පැවැත්වීමට රනිල් විකුමසිංහ මහතා දකින සිහිනය කිසිෙස්ත් සැබෑ ෙනාවන බවත්, 2006 පැවැත්ෙවන ජනාධිපති වරණය සඳහා වාමාංශික පුගතිශීලී බලෙවීගවල ෙපාදු අෙප්කෂකෙයක් ඉදිරිපත් කරන බවත් ශුී ලංකා නිදහස් පෂෙය් පුධාන ෙල්කමී මහවැලි, ගංගාධාර හා රජරට සංවර්ධන ඇ
    http://www.lakbima.lk/articles/news5.htm

  75. What nonsense is this!!! Is this Sinhala or any other language which alieans speak!!! Mr Donald is right it seems. All these guys spend time on research and some Dinos spend millions of government rupees and come with a very inferior solutions like this. Why can’t a single character be displayed as a single character. In all these bloddy solutions a charactor shows in 3-4 letters!!! What a joke is this!!!

    You can’t read lankadeep or lankaenews if you already don;t have their fonts. You had it already installed or some other font like kaputa helps those two e-papers. I challenge u to see those sites well with a brand new/formatted PC without any pre-installed SInhala charactor.

    Please do not waste your valuble time in researches that produce stuff similar to “Kandak Wilila Mee Petiyek Weduwa Wagey.” This is a shame!!! We have 100s of computer experts in this country but none can produce a perfect solution for Sinhala. The only guy who claims capable of doing this, Donald, unfortunately, is cracy.

  76. Pasan Thanks for the comments

    Since you are from Malabe Mr Dimuth (now in Canada) was a person who understood my project and helped me with the public lecture under the nose of the Dino at the Uni of Colombo
    I always appricaiate the work of Malabe but still none of the students other than Pasan told that Unicode Sinhala is incomplete.

    Quote from 73
    Yes I agree with you.We couldn’t display all the sinhala characters from that table.
    This was a reserach project that we did for our final year. We got successfull may be 80%.
    Unqote

    Thank you again for the truth

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  77. I too had the same question JCA had re the Lanka Bell story. Here’s the answer I got from a knowledgeable person which may be of interest to this group:

    “I think in this case they use English to type the Sinhala message as the CDMA handsets which they are marketing don’t have the language capabilities nor application installation capabilities. So they are sending Sinhala & Tamil messages in English. Ex: If you want to say something like “Kohomoda Sepa Saneepa?” You type the message in English and send the message.

    In order to put native sinhala & tamil to the handsets either the handset manufacturers should do that in firmware level or we have to use bit high end CDMA handset which is capable of running Java Application which then can support our software. We discussed this with both Suntel & Lanka Bell but the issue is the other handsets are expensive and manufacturers want volume commitments.”

  78. I quote again from No24 of http://www.lirneasia.net/2006/07/standardizing-sinhala-for-it-part-3/

    (Part3)

    Quote
    Your main request of supporting the QWERTY keyboard layout for Sinhala and Tamil is not at all an unreasonable request. Users the world over have graduated from traditional typesetting systems, and there are strong legacy reasons for which it is sometimes prudent to support multiple keyboard layouts for any language.
    Unquote

    First we got to accept the present Sinhala unicode is incorrrect
    Accept the need of full individual characters for Sinhala (only Donald has published such idea and comment)
    Accept the fact we need a proper IME type of application (Donald will develop the basic one)

    When we line up this and develop it the language problems using SInhala and Tamil will be eliminated.

    Once I do for the PC converting it to suit the SMS system is not a problem.

    I am not given the credentials to perform this task. It is all because Dino’s group missed my thinking of Individual characters and just went ahead with the type writer technology.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  79. Most of the Sinhalese newspapers like Lankadeepa, Mawbima, Rivira cannot be read with Netscape and Mozilla browsers even with the downloaded fonts. Over to you donalnd.

  80. That is why I am asking you all to give me the credentials

    Donald

  81. The Rotary Club of Colombo Reconnections is having a IT Work shop Please register directly with the Rotary Club of Colombo Reconnections

    Details given below

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Secretary, Rotary Club of Colombo Central

    ***************

    Workshops on IT Literacy
    The Rotary Club of Colombo Reconnections
    September 2006

    The Rotary club of Colombo Reconnections will celebrate the New Generations month of September 2006 with 2 workshops on IT Literacy. This will be held on Tuesday, 26th of September 2006 at the Galle Face Hotel, Lotus Lounge.

    “Opportunities with Free and Open Source Software : How to become a Smart Player in the Knowledge Revolution” – by Dr Shahani Markus Weerawarana, Chief Technology Officer, ICT Agency of Sri Lanka

    The details of the 2 workshops are as follows;

    Workshop one – starting at 5pm

    This will be aimed to provide the younger generation with new/latest technological/business information, career guidance and inspirational role models, that would enable them in today’s marketplace.

    This program will be followed by a workshop for Rotarians

    Workshop two (the business community) – starting at 6.30pm

    What we need to know about our corporate website, the internet and email as leaders in the business community and professionals.

    The above workshops will briefly cover:
    – An introduction to Free & Open Source Software (FOSS)
    – The FOSS model of operation
    – FOSS initiatives across the world and in Sri Lanka
    – How to become part of FOSS community

    The entrance fee per person is a only Rs 300/=

    We looking forward to welcoming you to experience and be inspired, together with members of your club, organization, family and friends. Please email us at timalta@sltnet.lk and confirm your attendance so that we can cater for you.

    We meet every Thursday at 6.30pm at Galle Face Hotel.

    Please pass this on to others who can benefit.

  82. Donald,

    As I have told you umpteenth times before you do not need any credentials to develop a new system, if you think the present one is wrong.

    Nobody gave credentials for Wright brothers to invent the air plane. They did on their own. Nobody gave credentials to Bill Gates to develop Microsoft Windows. Neither Michael Dell nor Steve Woznaik got any credentials to develop Dell and Apple PCs. That is how things happen.

    If you are so passionate about it, you can always develop your own system. If it is worth buying phone companies will buy it. It is up to you to sell it.

    You go on repeating the same stupid arguments like a broken gramophone, as somebody rightly said. You never answer the key questions.

    1. Even if your system is 100% correct, how are you so sure major OS developers will buy it? There were so many excellent systems did not see the light of the day, because nobody wanted to buy them. What is your marketing plan?

    2. Even if your system is 100% correct, why do you think any phone manufacturer will include that in their phones, when the market is so small? Why should they bother?

    If you can answer those two questions successfully, you do not need any taxpayers money to introduce your system. You can do it right away.

    Unfortunately, all you have done is to cut and paste something that appears in the back of any hodi potha, and claim it is yours.

    All I can see is you are an alternate Dino, who wants to kick Dino away and waste the tax payers money on useless projects.

    I am glad that the students of SLIIT have gone far ahead of you. You should learn from them.

  83. Even if your system is 100% correct, how are you so sure major OS developers will buy it?

    My system runs with the OS, First it will be for Windows and then to Apple. Later to Linux
    It will be for Sinhala then to Tamil. It will not be sold to any major developer.
    Intention is to give it to the pubic Free of charge. (as long as the costs are covered)
    But I hold the copyrights over commercial usage.

    If you read the No 24 of part 3 Microsoft India accept my system

    The Govt do have enough funds for R&D use a fraction of it for this project

    The market is not small. What is the total of Mobile Suntel Lanka Bell SLT Hutch useres in Lanka?

    Over 3 million!! This will grow if they could use the local language SMS. What about the people in India? and Sri Lankans living outside Sri Lanka–

    Once I do for Sinhala This could be applied on all other ehtinic languages in Indian Sub continent.

    All these business opportunities are for the Sri Lankans software developers are we going to missthis chance!!!!
    So far how much we have spent on Cintec & ICTA for a wrong solution!!! We have spent over 25 years and achive nothing

    Latin script is in full characters, Why cant we use Sinhala full characters. Most of the langauges who have developed in ICT are using full characters.

    I cannot develop this software single handed. Need many people to join.
    All the characters has to be drawn individually using adobe illustrator
    Different weights of characters mean several write ups
    Knowledge of TYPOLOGY and Typography is a must

    In Sri Lanka only one or two persons will be able to handle this.
    They will have to stop all other work that they do now and spend all the time on this project.
    I have to compensate their livelihood.

    I have to pay royalties for several foreign patents and copyrights holders
    Licence software etc

    Part of the software has to be develop outside Sri Lanka.

    Then Dictionary development. encodings etc etc

    Input method development
    Wijesekera keyboard and JC Ahangama’s romanized qwerty method
    What ever the input method one uses you get the same character .

    The first step is to admit the present system in incorrect and incomplete.

    Other option is Full character system. Only I have spoken and published a document for use of full Sinhala characters.

    Accept my character encodings.
    Later stage this could be the SLSI Standard.

    The cheapest option is:
    CEO of ICTA is vacant. I have applied for the job. Appoint me as the CEO and see how IT grow in Sri Lanka in years to come.

    Then all above could be done using ICT Research and innovation grants. I can guide the software people in the correct path. There are over 70 applicants.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  84. [quote]

    The cheapest option is:
    CEO of ICTA is vacant. I have applied for the job. Appoint me as the CEO and see how IT grow in Sri Lanka in years to come.

    [unquote]

    Say no more. Now I can fully understand you.

    All these days I incorrectly thought you were ranting because genuinely you want to correct some mistake done by somebody.

    Now I am wiser.

    Now I can understand the reason why you helped Mahavilachchiya kids. It was not because you genuinely felt for the kids but you had your own agenda and exploited the opportunity to earn some fame.

    Like most of the people in this country you too have your own personal agenda and you don’t care what ever happen to the country or poor people. You just want to exploit them to achieve your own personal goals.

    By the way are you related to Dino or GihanD? You just sound like one of them…

  85. Mr Dhamma Gamage in his comments in 34 indicates that the Sinhala font is available onlt in Lankadeepa, lankanews and sricolama. Can any one pl explain whether the Sinhala font and usage as a web lanuage is same in all three websites and if different what does it means to a non-techy like me.

    Nevertheless sricolama.com is a fantastic site with lot of sacasm and depth dealing with our politics and economy.

    Malinda Senarath

  86. Quote
    why you helped Mahavilachchiya kids.
    Unquote

    When I helped Mahavilachchiya in 1999 there were no ICTA or E Sri Lanka nothing
    Need for Sinhala was planted on me by Nirangan meegammana (1998 or so) further enhanced with rural work and seeing Sinhala books published in Sri Lanka.

    Recently I saw the 550 Jataka Kata’s printed and published by MD Gunasena a thickness of one foot
    Priced at 3500. Good work but all sinhala characters are of new the Content page was hand written
    our rich Sinhala culture going to extinct soon….

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  87. Quote
    if different what does it means to a non-techy like me.
    unquote

    Sri Lanka registered a incomplete set of sinhala characters in the unicode consortium
    All the sinhala characters were not given code points or locations in unicode

    For the same character which are not registered in unicode the different font developers do have different locations in the font map. The Sinhala text created by FONT A manufactured by Mr X is not readable with FONT B manufactured by Mr Y.

    This blog deals with this problem and I am the only individual in Sri Lanka talking on this subject
    Plase visit my web site and send me an Email so that I can talk to you

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  88. Quote
    Like most of the people in this country you too have your own personal agenda and you don’t care what ever happen to the country or poor people. You just want to exploit them to achieve your own personal goals.
    Unquote

    Is it wrong to apply for a job?
    Is it wrong for a person to have goals in life?
    How can my job as the CEO of ICTA hamper the lives of “what ever happen to the country or poor people”
    What about the present guys working there??incl DINO???

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  89. Muchalinda I missed one phrase from your comment 84
    Quote
    you were ranting because genuinely you want to correct some mistake done by somebody.
    Unquote

    Al last you too admitted that the present Sinhala unicode is incorrect and incomplete!!!

    I would be more happy if you could clarify who is this “”Somebody”” is!!!!

    Thanks

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  90. I am back here after about a month. Harsha has addressed me and said that
    “there is plethora of local language content” at
    http://www.nenasala.lk/

    Of course it has English which is what you meant by local language. I tried Sinhala. It said:
    Coming Soon! (Sept 22, 2006).

    The explanation is simple. Sinhala Unicode travels as UTF-8 encoding. That means each letter is THREE bytes long in transit and two when sent and received. (read RFC 3629). How many servers would do the translation? Obviously not this server. See the entry number 74 that is all question marks. Even if the server hands out the correctly transformed characters, your browser and mine don’t support anything outside single-byte code.

    So, indeed, Unicode is COMING SOON, not here yet. The problem is that the Internet does not belong to a government or any organization. It is the ultimate democracy. Every one is contributing with their networks and servers. Now, who wants to risk upgrading their server to support Indic when 99% of traffic is in Latin that uses one byte per character? Unicode wants to promote business for its owners. So already there are European companies churning out Indic converters to Latin to show them back in the native letters! The Unicode idea is BUSINESS.

    We would need special fonts (Sinhala/Tamil) and specially configured browsers to read Sinhala Unicode. Microsoft has Uniscribe font renderer (that Linux too uses, I hear), but they have not even employed it in MS Word. They said that this was a business decision.

    What Unicode accomplishes is isolation of small communities like the Sinhalese. Even the Tamils though they can provide economies of scale for a Tamil-only Internet, they would also be split like the Sinhalese between the English users and the rest.

  91. JCA — about nanasala had been discussed. Like a film it is coming soon!!!
    This site is also under the President of Sri Lanka.
    What a sad situvation!!!!

    All these problems are with the incomplete Sinhala unicode.
    With your computer you will be able to see Japanese or Korean even if you dont understand
    This is beause all these charactes are registered with ISO and Unicode

    Most interesting quotation is in No 50
    CSSL has not yet corrected the caption

    This is Sri Lanka.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  92. JC,

    I think you have not read my post completely. I was talking about CONTENT which you get under Open Enrich which is located @ nenasala.lk. Why dont you click the Open Enrich Icon and then go inside. You will see many nensala’s to content providers listed, and out of which just select even the 1st one and select Sinhala, you will see content which is in Unicode Sinhala. I saw so many content submitted from various parties which are under this platform. When I inquired from them why this is not put directly – what I got to know is that they are in the process of setting up a new site which will link all the nenasala content creations & submissions where most are in Sinhala & Tamil. Further all these are in Unicode. So people who will look at anything blindly will not see these contents rather will see only things that favour them such as “Coming Soon”

    Well as per Microsoft all I know is that Sinhala Unicode based Language enable pack for Vista is finalized and MS will be releasing either with initial release or subsequently. Contact local MS office for more details who are doing most of the required co-ordination work. Am not talking about Linux as they have already enabled Sinhala Unicode, and even major search engines such as Google has enabled it.

    So things are happening whether you’ll like it or not. Just go and do Googling in Sinhala Unicode, where you will see so many pages apparing unlike good old days. So google is on Sinhala Unicode and I dont need to tell you’ll about google. So look at in another 3 months you will be further amazed to see more and more content popping up.

    Finally, as I always says LET THE BEST STANDARD WINS!!! So let’s see who’s going to be visible in another 2-3 years time in PC’s to Notebooks to various other systems. And let’s see what will be the standard of choice when it comes to standardized Sinhala. LET THE MARKETS, END USERS, MAJOR O/S-Platform Providers, ACADEMIC AND PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS decide and establish the standard in the market place.

    Hoever, in conclusion Sinhala Unicode will come as the winner IF all other’s keep their developments just for the books (THEORY) without producing anything for real and do their respective marketing to get MS, to Apple to Linux to adopt their so called COMPLETE VERSIONS!!

    Harsha

  93. I have answered about your open enrich in 41 and 47

    Quote 47
    How much funds were wasted by (Open eNRICH v4.0 developed by National Informatics Centre, Government of India in collaboration with UNESCO and OneWorld International Foundation.) doing web sites that cannot be accessed by all operating system and on a concept byond the basics of Unicode Inc and Internet.
    Unquote

    Quote from No 1
    Has any one even try….
    to cut and paste with note pad into word and then into helawadane and/or Thibas? further into linux? Apple using the sinhala unicode or SLSI 1134
    Unquote

    Quote
    LET THE BEST STANDARD WINS!!!
    Unquote

    Simply by blocking a system proposed by me with full sinhala characters you cannot make such comment.
    What I always say is what SLSI 1134 registered with unicode is incomplete set Sinhala characters

    Please answer the quote no 1 You avoid this answer. Also Answer the question posted in 40

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  94. Quote

    ” Now I can understand the reason why you helped Mahavilachchiya kids. It was not because you genuinely felt for the kids but you had your own agenda and exploited the opportunity to earn some fame.”
    Unquote

    I think people in this blog are now understanding the truth. Donald is just yet another Dino. If you make him the CEO of ICTA, it will be the end of IT in this country. He threw some of the wastes to kids in Mahavilachchiya and became famous and now exploiting the opportnuties to become rich at his old age. We had enough of these Dinos.

  95. Quote from 94
    He threw some of the wastes ………..and became famous
    ……become rich at his old age……
    Unquote

    Please be more specific about the word “waste”
    How do you calculate the value of “famous”?
    Is it wrong for any individual to become rich or richer or richest?

    Better answer the question posted on 93

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  96. Harsha,

    I first went to:
    http://220.226.204.215:8080/eNRICH/
    Then I clicked on the link: ICTA Hub, Sri Lanka

    Then I cane to an English page. I selected Sinhala as you said and go a page full of question marks.

    That page is:
    http://220.226.204.215:8080/eNRICH/viewPortalPage.do?PPID=300
    This is a generated page by Apache Tomcat Java server. The proof is in that if you type it sirectly to the Adress bar you’ll see a server error message.

    Why Question Marks?
    Obviously, because I do not have Sinhala Unicode in this machine I used to go there. That statement has to be clarified. My not having Sinhala Unicode means I do not have all support software for showing fonts that are written for the Sinhala code block of the Unicode databse. My computer is fully Unicode enabled. However, Sinhala needs to be specially installed in it speciafically to read Sinhala.

  97. Sorry… I hit a key prematurely and it got posted. I have not finished yet.

    Harsha,
    Continuing…

    This is the fundamental problem with Unicode. I mean the part of Unicode that assigns codepoints to characters, which are larger than single bytes. ISO-8859 was disbanded (1999?) after Unicode persuaded ISO to let Unicode manage the globalization. (Only Thais smelt the stink and refused to change). ISO-8859 had the best solution for us. Unicode character scheme killed Indic! (The bickering Indians gave the hint when their ISO-8859-12 failed in disagreement). This whole thing ISOLATES our people to their own little elitist brainwashing corner on the Internet.

    Now, we have two bytes for each letter and it has to have special requirements like UTF-8. UTF-8 is fine for Latin because one letter = one code point. Nothing different from Latin-1 aka ISO-8859-1. But for Sinhala /Tamil the problems are compounding: Can’t show the languages on web pages written according to standard HTML using CSS. You need to generate pages as showed in the above part of this entry. You can’t use them in email etc.

    This is why I am proposing romanized Sinhala. Everything of Unicode is not bad. One good side of Unicode is the font technology that gave birth to Smart Fonts. We should spend more time on this subject, if not for anything, because it is UNICODE! (Gather around folks, America rules!)

    The local office of Microsoft for me is Redmond, Washington, USA. (I live in Texas, right? The Bush country, alas — aho). You are right. Sinhala would be there when it is ready. I think this means people in SL need to say ok (Unicode alphabet is bad, and that’s another subject) and MS has to weigh out their ‘What’s in it for me’. (They want the government to buy a ton of Windows Vistas, of course).

    Frankly, I do not want Sinhala Unicode to win, though I don’t see how it can win if there is a contest as Harsha seems to want to have. It is not a contest for me. I want the people of my native land, Sinhala and Tamil, to be included in the brave new world of technology, not to languish in the backwater while a handful selfishly deprive them of the opportunity.

  98. Thanks JCA for lovely reply

    The group that controls the IT secror “”selfishly deprive “” the public use of Sinhala and Tamil
    They have done this for the past two decades until I started raising questions & voicing the correct path

    The most fuuniest thing is there are over 70 applicants for the ICT Research and innovation grants.
    None of these guys have the backbone to put any comment on this blog relating to Sinhala and Tamil usage.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  99. My dear ICT enthusiasts,

    As someone who is keenly interested in ICT, I have been following your blog for quite some time. Sometimes I feel so sad to read your messages. There are so many enthusiastic individuals in this forum (Donald, Harsha, Harsula, Dharma and JC) who are interested in contributing their expertise to the development of ICT, but I understand now they do not get an opportunity. I can understand, if given the least opportunity how much they can do to our beloved Mother Lanka.

    I believe the issue is with the present management with the ICT Agency. Professors of the old school do not understand the contemporary issues in the ICT. We need to have somebody from the new generation, but simultaneously he/she should be mature enough to handle critical issues. We need to have a very dynamic CEO who can understand the issues correctly. Manju was dynamic, but he too did not have the correct exposure to ICTs. A CEO of ICTA should definitely have deep insight to ICTs. Otherwise he/she will not be able to fathom the technical issues. I know that because I have studied computer science at post graduate level and possess more than 20 years experience in the field.

    It is also important that our approach should be a collective one. There is no point individually shouting. The voice of one person will die in the noise. We all should get together in the task of developing the ICT field in our beloved motherland.

    Except for my tight schedule, I am always willing to invite you people all for a drink so we can discuss how better we can take the ICT forward in this country. I am sure people like Donald have lots of innovative ideas to share with us. We should also get the guidance of other ICT experts too. It will be a long journey, but we should start somewhere.

    I wish you all the best.

    Thank you.

    Yours sincerely,

    C. Rasaputra

  100. This came in Bytes for All today….

    e-Sri Lanka ICT4D program at cross roads
    ****************************************

    The very ambitious e-Sri Lanka program, which was launched in 2003 by the Sri Lankan government with the assistance from the World Bank, has suddenly entered to troubled waters with the admission of political appointees to its highest echelons. The future of this USD 53 million program which (according to its own vision statement) intend to harness ICT as a lever for economic and social advancement
    by taking the dividends of ICT to every village, to every citizen, to every business and to re-engineer the way government thinks and works, now stand at crossroads, without anybody knowing what would happen tomorrow.

    For the last few months there was a severe and unpleasant political battle between the ex-CEO, who was appointed by the previous government and the Chairman, a political appointee of the current government. Ultimately after the public exchange of many acidic comments against each other by both parties at discussion forums and e-groups the Chairman, a retired Professor, was able to gain control
    by deciding not to extend the tenure of the CEO, though the latter has served just mere three years. Now the program is headed by this retired Professor, whose weak heath condition makes him unsuitable for any type of job, let alone leading a national level ICT for Development initiative. However, with his strong political
    connections so far, he has successful in the game of survival. He has also refused appointing a new CEO, rather indefinitely postponed the appointment, because it might weaken his position.

    Under the previous CEO, the e-Sri Lanka program had been able to achieve many important milestones, notably in taking the dividends of ICT to the poorest of the poor in Sri Lanka society. More than 250 telecentres were established under the Nanasala telecentre program. A Government Information Centre to provide all government
    services through online too has been set up. In addition there were many initiatives to produce local content in Sinhalese and Tamil, the languages of the common people. Sending e-mail in local language was not possible previously and this was made possible by accepting
    and implementing the Sinhalese Unicode standard. Under the new management most of these programs have come to standstill.

    Perhaps the worse was the financial frauds now alleged to take place in the program. Some complain that the removal of the previous CEO was to pave way for these frauds. Few months back, the national newspapers alleged some of the highest level of ICTA officials involved in awarding a USD 13 million deal to a company that have not even met the basic requirements to bid. This company does not
    have a local partner and have not explained how it will implement an island-wide network without having a local presence. The newspapers linked this company to a close relative of a powerful politician.

    It is surprising why the post of the CEO of the program remain vacated for more than two months now. Without a CEO, the work of the program has come to a standstill with nobody knowing what to do. So it is essential to appoint a dynamic CEO to ICTA as soon as possible.

  101. Re posting of 81

    I received the following notice

    ————————-

    Due to insufficient confirmations from participants, we decided to postpone the IT Workshop to the 2nd of November. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused.

    Will keep you informed of the detials of the program closer to the date.

    Thank you,
    Rgds,
    Rtn Buddhima Mannapperuma
    Secretary,
    Rotary Club of Colombo Reconnections

    Donald

  102. Dear Rasaputra

    I am always free to meet you
    I emailed you but you never acknowledged it

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  103. Aha,
    Dino’s frauds have gone to Bytes for All!!! This is really great. The thief has to be exposed internationally. Dino, death is coming. Be prepaired. Your time is up. The day that President MR comes to know your past “endevours” you are gone!!!! Can you cut and paste the URL for B for All so that I could send it to Dino’s sons.

  104. My dear Mr. Rasaputra,

    Sir, I do not know you from Adam. It is rumored for some time now that you would be the next CEO of ICTA. In fact, we have heard these rumors even before the post was advertised. So basically, it will be a political appointment. The advertisement is probably for the consumption of the konde bendapu cheenas in the World Bank. Api nodanna chess!

    I have never seen your CV, so I am not in a position to say whether you are qualified for the job or not. That has to be seen in future. ICTA has so far recruited quite a few incompetent fat cats, so I guess another one would not burden the system too much.

    My only question to you sir, if you are so qualified why do you try to enter ICTA through the back door? As a professional, why dont you try the front door? Or is it your habit you always try first knocking the backdoor? (offering beer to others and all) If that so, all I can guess is we have to expect a gloomy future in the ICT industry. The backdoor entrants are hardly known to achieve anything, except for themselves and their families.

    P.S. Thanks for the beer. I suggest you invite the poor people for a drink and ask their opinion, instead of asking our views. We have nothing more to say than what we already said above.

  105. Rasputra (or Rasputin) may have his credentials. But I am not sure our Guirilla Style applicant, Donald, has his OLs right with the way he barges in here. I will be the one least surprised even if Donald performs a suicide attack at Rasaputra (Rasputin) if (sorry, when) Rasa gets the top job. Donald will be history with his stupid solution soon.

    Best,
    Sam

  106. Rasaputra,

    This entire thing is not so complicated as everyone is making it out. First find what we want. We want to implement the $53 million World bank plan? Hold on to those dollars because they cause debts — all 53 million (read the report).

    The common man cannot afford a computer, and worse, has no use for it. What is the use of a computer when he does not have a use for it? There is no Sinhala of general utility in it in spite of all the noise about Unicode. Perhaps there are 200 rich, bilingual urbanites using Unicode Sinhala for their pet projects such as turning Sinhala into half-baked Sanskrit. Unicode Sinhala is a Beta project that runs only on Windows XP computers. Does the World bank guys know this? Of course yes. They are a bank, whose business is lending money. Who is going to pay for all these XP computers for nænasælas? Wait, how about Windows Vista? Unicode Indic won’t work even with all that.

    Here’s what I think we need: A public network that has DECENT, ALWAYS-ON CONNECTIONS to the internet. (Samarajiva, we need only 24 AWG copper pairs for this. We have them hanging from those posts). The nænasælas equipped with computers that allow people access to the Internet for nominal cost. This is the single reason that the Internet became so popular in America — very affordable rates. The Internet has a unique way of educating people, English speaking or not. Humans are curious by nature and that means we learn.

    Let the youth read, play and learn on their own. Teach computer software technology at nænasælas. Beating my drum: ALLOW THEM to learn romanized Sinhala/Tamil ON THEIR OWN — needs two days only. (Don’t worry, it covers Sanskrit BETTER than ANY OTHER script on earth — I challenge anyone to refute this). This facilitates messaging. Inter-communication among peers accelerate learning. Sinhala in English? Smart fonts will show romanized languages in native script. Throw that Vista to the dogs. Unicode (font technology) is supported even in old Windows NT!

    Next time I write in romanizd Sinhala. If the management of this forum don’t like it they’ll ban me.

  107. “Next time I write in romanizd Sinhala. If the management of this forum don’t like it they’ll ban me.”

    JC, Kidding??? I am yet another guy who belongs to elite and studied/worked in USA. Do you expect me to read your Sinhala? I too am one of those good – for -nothing fellows. Never expect me to do anything for Sinhlese or Tamil. I will only work for English speking ctholics as most of the organiztion chiefs do in Sri Lanka.

  108. I observe the usage of this forum had reached a record high yesterday.

    Perhaps it is due to the presence of Mr. Rasaputra here. We Sri Lankans do not need anyone to teach us how to reach the limelight. Now everybody (including Donald) is in the process of preparing their own plans on how best to butter Mr. Rasaputra.

    Mr. Rasaputra, I guess it is not you who made the second comment. (above this post) Can you please confirm?

  109. Quote
    Never expect me to do anything for Sinhlese or Tamil.
    unquote

    Go and change the constitution of Sri Lanka then talk of this subject.

    People like you knows nothing about the Sinhala culture and Sinhala Language but educated in basic Sinhala writes like this.

    If you had written a comment like this in any other country you will have to quit even the present job you hold.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  110. I don’t think Rasaputram ever appeared here. You all are fooled. He will never appear in here. Like good old Dino, he will keep away from dangerous places like these and will have his own people around to carry on.

    Never expect anything positive from these people. Nation is heading for a definite disaster.

  111. I got a mail with following advice

    Quote
    Change of out look:
    Rather than going to this with a confrontational stance, as you have on akuru.org, how about putting it out as a project to explore improvements for current situation, rather than finding and focusing
    on shortcomings.
    Unquote

    We have to find the short comings and correct it. When these short comings are listed they are not prepared to admit it. Still twisting words and go in search of methods to fill their pockets.

    Like quote 111 “Nation is heading for a definite disaster”

    We lose the Sinhala language, Sinhala Culture yet nobody cares.

    Donald Gaminitillake :-(
    Colombo

  112. Donald,

    Someone must have sent you that email with good faith. These are the days that no “Mr Cleans” can survive. Prof Sam never expected his reputation to be smashed this way. Same is with Mahinda R, Somawansa A, Wimal Wee and most of the others. You are on the safe side yet and who knows how many are hunting for your weaknesses? You have been neglecting all the advices and warnings and hope you wouldn’t pay for the mistakes like Dino did. No one is perfect, they say and you can’t be an exception.

  113. Rasaputra,

    Romanized Sinhala:

    raasapuþra, mama ðækala þiyenavaa þamusege hapákam, looka ðælee þæna þæna pala kara þiyenavaa. bohoma ageyi. namuþ æyi mee ígriisi kaþaakarana kaþoolika lokká gæna prazµaya? krisþiyaani aya yata giya kaalayeeðii síhala bhaaxaavata mahaGu seevayak kara þibenavaa. ov, bayibalaya liyanna þamaa. eyaþ hoÐa paramaarþayak uda neeða kalee?

    krisþiyaanun vagee neveyi aða inna samahara iiniyaa bavuððhayoo. mama ðannavaa mageema nææyoo síhala hæra ðamaa kædicca, vahalungee ígriisi vælaÐagena innavaa.

    mata hamu velaa þiyena sææma mæði viyee bavuððha haamuðuru namakma mata kiivee ‘þiyadoor unnaanseegee’ ‘síhala bhaaxaava’ yana poþa þamaa iþaama agee síhala poþa kiyaa. eka namak kiyuvaa [Theodore] kiyannee ‘ðeviyoo ðunna’ kiyana aruþayayi kiyaa. eeka mona þaram lassana aðahasakða? ee haamuðuruvoo penvuuvee aða api noðannaa minis guµayak — krüþaguna sælakiima. mee siyalu haamuðurunamakma síhala hæðææruvee krisþiyaanu svaami varayek livuu poþin neeða?

    English:
    Don’t you wish you could read the above in raw Sinhala script? I have the Smart Font that does it. It makes Sinhala the only dual-script language, so far. Tamil follows. Smart Fonts are a bit ahead in technology. Windows Vista supports it in its Notepad and perhaps Firefox browser would support Smart Fonts, soon too. When that happens, Sinhala is equally technologically enabled as English.

    Try to read my next entry.

  114. þavan síhala:

    namoo namoo maþaa

    apa zrii lákaa namoo namoo namoo namoo maaþaa
    sunðara siri barinii surænði aþi soobhamaana lákaa
    ðhaanya ðhanaya neka mal palaþuru piri jaya bhuumiya lákaa

    apa hata sæpa siri seþa saðanaa jiivanayee maaþaa
    piliganumæna apa bhakþi puujaa namoo namoo maaþaa
    apa zrii lákaa namoo namoo namoo namoo maaþaa

    obavee apa viðyaa
    obamaya apa saþyaa
    obavee apa zakþii
    apa haða þula bhakþii

    oba apa aalookee
    apagee anupraanee
    oba apa jiivanavee
    apa mukþiya obavee

    nava jiivana ðeminee niþina apa pubuðu karan maaþaa
    jçaana viirya vadavamina rægena yanu mæna jaya bhuumi karaa

    eka mavakage ðaru kæla bævinaa
    yamu yamu vii nopamaa
    preema vadaa sæma beeðha ðuræralaa
    namoo namoo maaþaa
    apa zrii lákaa namoo namoo namoo namoo maaþaa

    ===================
    mokakða ee?

  115. Donald,

    “I got a mail with following advice

    Quote
    Change of out look:
    Rather than going to this with a confrontational stance, as you have on akuru.org, how about putting it out as a project to explore improvements for current situation, rather than finding and focusing
    on shortcomings.
    Unquote”

    Donald,

    Whoever this is, he/she is advicing you to be prudent and reasonable. People like VK, Mahinda R, Somawansa A, Vimal Wee, etc. had there own good times and bad times as well. Their images were smashed to zero within their bad time and the next target can be you. Pride goes before a fall. You can’t be the hero forever. When bad times come, your image too will be smashed. You can’t be 100% perfect. You must have done your mistakes too. Once they are exposed you too will be at the receiving end. So, use your brain and be reasonable.

    Someone Who Admired You

  116. Worried about Future

    Dear Donald uncle,

    I am a young software engineer. I passed out three years ago and now working in a major software firm in Colombo.

    This is an earnest request from you. I request this from you because you are one of the extremely few people who can do this.

    I might not agree with you fully that VK Samare, Gihan Dias and the gang is fully responsible for the pathetic developments (or lack of it) we have so far made in introducing Sinhala to computers. Assuming even if they are responsible for that, it is not the worst thing they have done.

    VK Samare, Gihan and the clan have now established a virtual mafia in the ICT industry. I have understood this even when I was in the university. This small mafia now governs the entire ICT industry. They do not allow anybody to break into their domain. We can never think of doing anything without first getting their permission. Even somebody as smart as Manju was not successful in entering their domain. Another victim was Dr. Dilantha Withanage. Dr. Withanage was the most dynamic employee ICTA ever had and he had to leave because he did not want to be a part of this VK Samare – Gihan mafia.

    VK Samare uses all his powers to discourage anybody who even speaks a word against him. I know several cases he threatened people and he has even threatened the employers of those who criticize him. VK is basically a venomous snake. He unsympathetically bites anyone who steps on him. The only person who survived is you.

    The bottom line most of the youngsters like us cannot even say a word against him because if we do, we know the next day VK Samare will see that he will end our careers. To be frank, I am so afraid to say anything against him. I appear here, because I can come anonymously and because I trust Prof. Rohan S. will not betray us to VK Samare, by releasing our IP numbers. Otherwise, I never even think of saying anything against this venomous man. If I say something against him, I know if he cannot take revenge in this life, VK Samare will come after me even in my next life, through out the sansara.

    You are somebody special because you are one of the few people neither VK Samare nor Gihan could not do anything. So you are in a relatively safe position. You have been against them and you are not afraid of them. They cannot ruin you. (If they can they would have done it already.)

    So in fact, even perhaps you do not know it, you have a much larger role than you play. You have to destroy this mafia and protest the ICT industry of this country. We cannot just wait till VK Samare and Gihan ruin the ICT industry. In other three years these people will suck all the blood from the ICT industry and let us only the peel. We have to do something.

    So forget about this Sinhala Unicode battle for the moment and try to destroy this mafia. I do not think you can do it alone. But everybody should join hands to do it. (whatever their personal opinion about the Unicode.) So please stop put a full stop to the Unicode battle, or rest it for sometime and think of contributing to this effort of national importance. Guys, we have to do it now. Given his age and health conditions, VK Samare might visit the other world in another 1-2 years maximum, but we should not make sure the ICT industry too not dies with this serpent. We have to protect it.

    We will help you in getting your patent. On the other hand you have to do something much bigger for the nation. You have to expose these people and tell the world what they have done. You have to make sure your voice is heard by the top people in the country. You have to talk to journalists and tell them. You have to tell the international community. In short, you have to break their present empire one way or the other. I do not know exactly how, but you have to do it. If you do not do it now, we all suffer in future, if the ICT industry never grows in Sri Lanka.

  117. Quote from 116
    neither VK Samare nor Gihan could not do anything.
    unquote

    Simply because I am writing the truth. What they missed out.
    We need a character allocation table for Sinhala.
    The character allocation table = SLSI = Unicode Sinhala = ISO Sinhala

    Unicode and Sinhala unicode are two different componants.
    I only object to the sinhala unicode. What Sri Lanka registered into this consortium is incorrect and incomplete set of Sinhala characters.

    I have exposed it on News Papers & on TV none can understand this issue.International community will never understand this issue because it is too basic. The way to break them is only through Sinhala issue and Dot IK.

    Quote
    We will help you in getting your patent.
    Unquote

    The officers in the patent office always consult the Dino. There are heaps of negative reports annex into my file. Lets see the outcome of it.

    Quote
    If you do not do it now, we all suffer in future
    unquote

    That is why I am fighting all alone. Need more comments from young people like you.
    Specially into News papers.

    “by releasing our IP numbers.” you always can go to a cyber cafe and upload the contents or to a nanasala!!!!

    If you all are scared– email the contents to me. I will upload to the site.
    They will have my IP number!!!!

    They had tried to break into my system yet failed.
    Apple system security is far advance than one think.
    Moment someone breaks into the codes anywhere in the world they automatically upgrade the system using internet. At no cost to the customer.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  118. You are not the only one who was affected by Dino and Gihan D in this country. We are getting report from mahawilchchiya that 30 houses and a public school have been connected to internet under a project callled mesh. Dino tried his best to close down mahawilchchiya project some time ago but those enterrising people have shown what they can do to the world. Dino will try his best to prevent these kids coming to the ICT world with his golayas in every nook and corner in Sri Lanka.

  119. Does this go with Sinhala Character issue?

    Native Mobile
    02 October 2006 14:44:15
    By Gayan Ratnayake

    Sri Lanka falls in love with Nokia’s Sinhala enabled handsets

    October 02 2006 (LBO) – Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, has sold over 5,000 handsets equipped with Sinhala language settings and keypads, since they were launched in Sri Lanka last week.

    Over 70 percent of Sri Lankans speak Sinhalese and Nokia’s local agent – Softilogic Communications – says the new handsets are proving to be a hit among the locals.

    “We have three Nokia models, the 1110i, 1112 and 1600 for immediate sale and the 2310, 2610 models will be available shortly” Nirasha Croos, Assistant Marketing Manager Branding for Softlogic Communications said.

    With a starting price tag of 5,700 rupees, the handsets come factory-fitted with Sinhalese keypads, phone menus and settings.

    “At the moment, these phones are available through our 400 odd dealers, island wide” Samanthi Weeratunga, Managing Director Softlogic Communications said.

    “The current market share for Nokia in Sri Lanka is about 80 percent including the grey market” Weeratunga said.

    In the absence of official data, industry players reckon around 150,000 handsets are sold each month with Finland’s Nokia dominating the market place. However, a number of handsets are brought down illegally and sold at a steep discount to the originals.

    “We are the authorized dealers for Nokia in Sri Lanka where the Sinhala enabled phones are imported only by us, therefore this is not available in the grey market,” she said.

    The Sinhala enabled phones will have the same Value Added Services (VAS) as English which mainly depend on the network provider.

    Softlogic Communications a subsidiary of Softlogic Holdings has not yet ventured into Tamil enabled phones and Croos says: “We will see how successful the Sinhalese version is (to go any further)”

    Softlogic Holdings is an authorized partner for Dialog GSM mobile phones in Sri Lanka which is the largest mobile operator with over 2.75 million subscribers representing 60 percent of market share in cellular sector.

    Member of Malaysia Telekom Group, Dialog has a market capitalization of 146 billion rupees.

    “The total mobile users in the country amount to 18 percent and lot of people keep away from mobile phones as a result of the language barrier. We hope this phone will improve sales” Croos says.

    The market venture will focus on the groups in towns and rural areas who are less fluent in English but keen to use a mobile phone.

    Meanwhile, Mobitel has also released its Sinhala enabled Nokia phone, which at the moment is available in only one model but throughout its islandwind all sales outlets.

    The Sinhala enabled phones are manufactured and assembled by Nokia which has nine factories world wide.

    Sri Lanka South Asian to offer mobile technologies way back in 1989, and the current 4-million subscriber market is split between Dialog Telekom, Mobitel Lanka, Celltel Lanka Ltd, Hutchinson. The telecom regulator is in the process of selecting a fifth operator.

  120. WORRIED ABOUT FUTURE?

    Stop your hate. You do not need anyone to succeed — only yourself.

    You say, “I am a young software engineer. I passed out three years ago and now working in a major software firm in Colombo.” I am sorry to say that you were waiting for orders from above for your advancement.

    Software development could be Sri Lanka’s number one foreign exchange earner. And you don’t know how.

    A country of 300 million is made up of 1% millionaires. Perhaps 99% of them own small businesses in that country — USA. I am a IT consultant there. How many do you want to write web sites for out of a million frustrated business persons? Rasaputra, speak up and confirm what I say!

    These small businesses all wish that they have web sites. Only very few have them. The reason is that there are no affordable, reliable and highly skilled web developers that they can use. This is the special niche that Sri Lanka can capture. We don’t need Sinhala Unicode for that, just good Internet access to homes and businesses. No college degree needed. Just the appetite to learn. Age: 10 upwards.

    The tools are free:
    Apache web server the most popular web server in the world — mine is running in on a 200 MHz PC running Windows NT — hosting five web sites an old man can write for his loyal customers. Yes a dinosaur. Who cares? The web sites hum with power. So, understand that you need only an old computer to develop web sites.
    Download!: http://httpd.apache.org/

    MySQL database:
    Free. The number one web based database used by the biggest and fastest web sites.
    Download!: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

    PHP:
    Most popular web developer programming language:
    Learn it: http://www.php.net/docs.php
    Get together with your friends and translate the help files for your brothers and sisters.
    Put them up on PHP site like everyone else did. Use romanized Sinhala. Not because I advocate it, but because it is Universally accessible and readable. (Write to me:
    jc@LANandWAN.com if you care to know and are self-reliant).

    HTML and CSS:
    http://www.w3.org/
    Learn it: Just Google for “learn html”
    You as a programmer will find these as baby talk.

    My advice: Do not use off the shelf HTML editors. Write them from scratch and test them as you go with web based validators like: http://validator.w3.org/

    If you are still a spoon-fed type, go to:
    http://www.apachefriends.org/en/index.html
    and download their all-in-one package and start experimenting.

    Stop hate and be productive. You are too young to be complaining.

  121. Quote from 118
    Dino will try his best to prevent these kids coming to the ICT world
    Unquote

    This is the reason for Dino to block Sinhala. There are more Sinhala speaking people than the english / Sinhala speaking group. To create a class and block the Sinhala speaking people coming forward Dinos group try their best to give an inferior product. An electronic typewriter and say it is a computer.

    Quote
    Ranil, Wimal & Joker Written by Gurulugomi Friday, 29 September 2006
    http://sricolama.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=2
    Unquote

    If you only read from the seventh line from the bottom. ….”eheth nodanna …..up to the end”
    The same text applies here. replace the word “culture” by “Sinhala ICT”

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  122. Sorry a correction

    replace the word “Literature” to “Sinhala ICT” not “Culture”

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  123. Fast-typing Sinhala Keyboard layout
    ==========================

    We tested the fast-typing keyboard Sunday night. The impromptu tester was ten-year-old Migara Jayasekara. He is bi-lingual and cannot read much Sinhala.

    We first asked him to type his first name in romanized Sinhala using Latin characters:

    migaara.

    Then taught him what the basic vowels are and how to type long vowels (simply double up the letter).

    Then we changed the font in Notepad to Sumangala Sinhala smart font. Now he could see how his name in Sinhala. Next, we asked him to type his last name staying in the Sinhala font. He was able to type (as if blindly) ‘jayaseekara’ without fully understanding what the characters he saw on the screen.

    CONCLUSION:
    Even a ten-year-old could learn romanized Sinhala with minimal instruction. It is an aid to learning the Sinhala script and to write it ORTHOGRAPHICALLY (i.e. correctly).

  124. Donald,
    See some of the comments made by me. they were not visible earlier due to a problem in the blog admin. Please go through them.

  125. That press release by Nokia is good news. So Sinhala is making a entry into practical IT use.

  126. Quote from 117
    You can’t be 100% perfect.
    Unquote

    Only a Buddha could be 100% perfect not any other human
    I never say I am 100% perfect.
    except the Sinhala issue based on todays knowledge. It has to be on full characters and a Allocation Table is a must.

    Nokia has come out good issue the bad part is it will never be compatable with another brand or a mobile system. It will work with in the frame work of Nokia a act of monopoly. These act of Monopoly has to be stopped. There would not be a monopoly if the character allocation table is published. I do have the copyrights over the issue of using full sinhala characters.

    With the unicode sinhala a limited number of sinhla may be used. But Nokia gives a location to “Yansaya” Nokia has its own charracter allocation table.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  127. I don’t think we should easily ignore the young software engineer’s cry for justice and help. Chasing the Dino out should be taken as a national duty by all of us. It would be even difficult than chasing Eric Solheim out though.

    Dino and his golayas have done heavy damages to ICT industry and the whole nation has to pay for that. Still Dino survives and younger, energetic people get sacked. Manju H was sacked beacause he was “too young” for the post in Dino’s (double) standards.

  128. In these discussions I have seen lot of people saying that they are afraid to go against V.K. Samare (Dino) because there career is in danger. Then what i think is your carere is doomed anyway. let me explain..

    I am really surprised to see, V.K. Sam is still in power. This shows how poor our country is. I am a former Colombo University student and I can still remember the very first day we were welcome to the Computer Science special Dig program. He never wanted to see my face in there and he threaten us(me) mentioning a slogan of our student union. We always fought against his unfair activities wherever possible including in the Faculty board. We had some success and lot of losses. Then VK Sam’s teem was Epasinghe and G.L. Peris. Rest of the academic staff of the Colombo University was so afraid to say a word against these serpents. Then V.K. Sam was occupying two departments Prof Chairs (including salary) Math and Comp/Stat. Except student union of that time and one or two teachers no one never opened there mouth against that. He won mostly because of the spineless academic staff of the University of Colombo.
    But we never let this serpents to destroy our future and professional careers. At least in IT sector you don’t have to be afraid. (I understand the unfortunate situation of other disciplines). Even before I finished my degree I was able to find a job.(I was coding using C , Oracle, SQL Windows and java, while V.K’s people dreeming about getting RPG(AS400) and Clipper jobs ) Yes it is not in a company where the top guy is VK’s henchmen. You don’t want to wok in those companies anyway because almost all the IT companies which are headed by VK’s henchmen’s are only trying to suck the blood from some kind of government grant funded doom project, instead of doing something innovative. If you want to be involved in real innovative technology, If you are dreaming to see your code to be running in every part of the world, if you really want to get payed fairly according to the international market values and lastly if you are planning to be a real professional, you should not even think about to get associated with those companies who lick VK and gangs sorry asses, they cant help you. I never met a single VK ass licker comp’s employee legally/professionally working in Silicon Valley, New York or Chicago. But I see some high ranking VK ass licker’s still illegally roaming around streets of New York, Nevada and Florida without proper job or qualification and living lowlife (I know some of these people, they are not really untalented but the biggest mistake they did was believing VK and Epa and doing all sort of Kade going’s for VK gang thinking in return VK will help them to go above others-[go US :-)]). (For the record I do not think that you have to come to US to be successful.)

    By not going against VK and gang (when you have a reason to go against) you won’t protect anything. Still he may be the king for few doomed comps and socalled professional body’s in LK, but as JC Ahangama says (he seems to be a very honest guy, But I do not agree with his tech advice, that is a separate discussion altogether) you don’t have to go after any body and you don’t need the blessing of any one if you want to build successful carrier in IT. There are so many opportunities out there in IT world (Yes VK will not understand the diversity and depth of this field- Aho! devdath). If I explain this in terms of my own experience: I work for kind of big software comp in US. When we interview some one for our project from Chennai, Bangalor or Gurgaon we do not ask for a recommendation letter from a big shot (yes, some times we ask for Sun Certification, if they don’t have exp) After few weeks I see some strange looking (not so strange nowadays) Indian lad struggling so hard to park his new Camry(some times BMW) in our office parking lot. You may ask why we are not recruiting Sri Lankans. Our HR dept says that there are not enough available people there.

    If you want to kick VKs ass there are so many ways you can do it now in this digital world. Go to yahoo, goggle groups post what you have to say or create a new group. Write a blog. If you are pissed get a domain name f@@kyouVKSamara.com or some thing. It’s really cheap these days- $3/mon. (Just go to http://www.moreweb.com/hosting.html I saw a deal on Anandtech.com forums you get half off). You don’t have to ask Donald guy to do it on behalf of you.

    But when you think about all this, fighting these idiots does it worth the effort. There are so many other important things in this world. There are many another ways to look at these too. If you guys are really bored and don’t have nothing else to do other than reading this blog, then let me suggest some thing more interesting. Go spend some time listening to Noam Chomsky http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo.htm

  129. If my last paragraph ( of post 130) above gives you any notion that I am trying to dilute your “Anti VKSam Struggle”, no I am not. But I feel some people here are really frustrated of the situation in the local environment. (Including hearing to Donald’s code page mantra ;-(), Sorry Donald you also need to learn little bit more about how things work in IT World(not only in SL), before becoming the savior of SLITC)
    In that kind of environment you won’t get any really creative idea. So you may need to get some intellectual break. Noam Chomsky is not a stranger to IT people, remember NLP Compiler Construction Lexical/Syntax analysis and the really fun stuff.

    So just to boot this I’ll add this: On setting up Grand Cyber attack on Dyno, If money or legal aspect is a issue I can help any body who want to speak out by providing a medium without any boundaries/restrictions (Of cause, I have to abide by US and international laws). Do not get me wrong I am not trying to take the potential Donald supporters or lirneasia fan base away.
    I just want to have some fun with one of my old enemy ;-)

    Ready!!!

    ==============================================================
    “You want to antagonise me! Antagnise me mother f@@cker”
    –Guns’N Roses

  130. Quote
    On setting up Grand Cyber attack on Dyno
    Unquote

    No use because the KEY gyus will not read or act on Grand Cyber attacks.
    News papers It has to be in Daily News, Wijaya Group, Sunday Observer.
    Rest of the papers are not accepted by the Key Guys stating they are baised.
    Even if the content is 100% correct and true.

    Very bad attitude problem.

    Need more comments into this blog as more people now do read this blog.
    When I meet them in private they do make comments In public :-X
    When I ask them to write they Smile ;-)

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  131. V K Samaranayake's ghost

    Donald,

    I shouldn’t have thrown your paper for Sinhala charactors from CSSL conference in 2003!!!! I should have let you in and then back stabbed you with a smiling face from the front. Now I am paying for what I did. My reputation is going down to zero!!! Please don’t do this. I am old man. Let me die in peace.

  132. Yse the “Ghost” is correct
    No Need to stab me– Dino could have taken even the copyrights out of me . For CSSL presentation you do take a Signed document for copyrights.

    You missed it.

    Now comeout with the rest of the SLSI 1134 story “Ghost”

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  133. V K Samaranayake's ghost

    Donald,

    I am not worried about damn copyrights. My bloody reputation is being tarnished. How can i face the ICT crowds at conferences, worksops now. I lived like an emporer and you made me a joker by exposing my malpractises to the whole world. I could have lived few more years if I could cheat the whole world. But now I know I am dying fast. I am a dabetic. Have mercy.

  134. Dear Ghost

    By distroying the language Sinhala you got a visa to enter the 4 hells “Satara Apaya”
    Enjoy your rebirth there
    I have no mercy on the language issue.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  135. No use because the KEY gyus will not read or act on Grand Cyber attacks.

    Donald, You seems to think like those old school media people. The world is changing.
    The way people get information is changing. I hope you heard how bloggers challenging conventional media here in US. At leaset if you want to learn form enemy see how tamilnet became the main source for all of those so called conventional journalists ( I know there are many other factors to it) So don’t give wrong advice to these young people.
    As long as common public is believing/waiting conventional media to go and attack VK, VK is safe.

    On the other hand if there is a big Cyber Attack and when ever some one search “ICT”, “sinhala font” or some thing like that, if these Attack sites coming up in search engines allover the place, believe me lazy conventional journalists will start quoting it.

    And the other thing is these attacks should not be rooted from a single place. When Dr. Samarageewa decides to shut down this place what will happen (Yeah some one will start some thing for sure to start over again from the zero). If there are many groups/sites circles coordinating and attacking it is not that easy. It will give some kind of comfort to people in lirneasia too.

    Overall what I am saying is don’t limit yourself to conventional media, don’t limit to one or two sites, don’t limit to English also. Dot limit to Unicode. Be creative (I have seen Donald’s site please go and pay few bucks to a kid who has some presentation skills – no I am not talking about those Flash maniacs who don’t even understand basic bandwidth limits).
    Don’t wait until you get to a National paper which so called those key guys read. If the buzz is some where else those suckers will be forced to read them. Try to understand how much power the civil society (cyber) has. Try to create some pressure from bottom and diversify it. There is no other easy way to do this. Don’t under estimate the power of your self like that “Worried about Future” (118) guy.

  136. V K Samaranayake's Ghost

    A full scale cyber attack!!!!! One which is similar to Mawil Aru attack!!!!! How can I survive this. I am an old man.

    Now when people search for “v k samaranayake” my official home page opens up. See “Vidya Jyothi Professor VKSamaranayak’s Home Page
    Professor VKSamaranayake Vidya Jyothi Professor VKSamaranayake. B.Sc (Ceyl)., DIC, Ph.D.(Lond.), D.Sc (Honouris Causa,MBCS, MCS(SL), FNASSL, MIEEE …
    http://www.ucsc.cmb.ac.lk/People/sam/index.htm – 9k – Cached – Similar pages”

    But if you go ahead with your cyber attack, these dirty blogs will come up and my name will be destroyed internationally. Even God pardons wrong doers. Why can’t you pardon me. I haven’t done much wrong than what is listed here.

    1. Blocking youth to be creative while I was in University of Colombo
    2. Discouraging young professionals
    3. Plundering government money to educate my sons in USA
    4. Foooling a president to become Chairman of ICTA
    5. Sacking Manju H, a young and promising CEO from ICTA
    6. Fooling the world bank and other INGOs and pretending as Mr Know It All
    7. Destroying the hopes of those innocent kids in Mahavilachchiya since 2003. (But those brats keep performing and make me a big joke in the country.)
    8. Sacking Dilanthe V from ICTA to get his car
    9. Threatening journalists who went against my propoganda
    10. Throwing away papers submitted by proffesionals to talk on ICT issues at conferences held here. (I usually promote my only henchmen like Chandana Weerasinghe and the clan. Why should I let other bughers in?)
    11. Wasting TV hours by showing my monkey face there so often people in this country change the channel when the word computers or ICT is anounced by the announcer
    12. Destroying the growing ICT empire in University of Moratuwa. (Shit! those guys from Moratuwa are talented and this guy Ajith M is doing good. How can any other IT gurus exisit in Sri Lanka? It’s only me.
    13. Locking horns with Donald. This is the worst crime I did. I should have asked him to join me for a beer and cheat him as I chaeted the president, his brothers and Lalith W

    See, I have done only these 13 (gosh!!! a bad number) crimes. Can anyone challenge me and add anymore crimes I did? See how an innocent old man I am. Do not let me die of heart attack on an easy chair in ICTA. Let me die at a hospital bed like the other old people do. Do not let the whole nation curse my sons and call them Sons of ……

  137. Dear Noam

    I have tried many avenues. including people from Provitional Council Level where the public eduation is controlled. First they gets activated and all of a sudden Dead for unknown reasons.

    I have given all the news paper articles but they talk of the publisher than reading the content.

    If the Key Guys are using internet. They would know the problem.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  138. hey Ghost

    you missed one the 14th

    Registering an incomplete set of Sinhala characters into the Unicode consortium and then making the SLSI 1134.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  139. 15. It was dino who cancelled Mahavilachchiya’s eSDI grant as well. Prof gave everything to those people who give him “his share” or “lion’s share”

  140. Nokia SMS any provider SMS readable only on Nokia Hand sets
    Dialog SMS only on limited handsets only on Dialog System
    Celltell SMS only on limited handsets only on Celltell System
    Mobitel SMS only on limited handsets only on Mobitel system

    Example
    If someone send a Sinhala SMS from Nokia handset OS to Sony on Dialog — the SMS is not readable!!!
    Is this what we wanted

    The reason is every provider developed their own character allocation table.

    The public will have to worship Dino for this mixed success of unreadable SMS
    Oh it is a fantastic way to encrypt the Sinhala SMS and keep it from others!!!!
    So this will became another National Defence problem. Now we cannot Stop a car, No Sat Tv, NO Smoking in public but Buses will drive emitting Black Smoke cops look the other way Next no mobiles in Public places. WOW what a beautiful National Defence we have

    Nokia will be the monopoly of the game and it is a violation of fair trade practice.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  141. Add to 141 “Ghost”

    16. unreadable Sinhala SMS on different systems and Hand sets

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  142. Hi Donald,
    Quote
    I have tried many avenues. including people from Provitional Council Level where the public eduation is controlled. First they gets activated and all of a sudden Dead for unknown reasons.

    I have given all the news paper articles but they talk of the publisher than reading the content.
    Unquote

    That is exactly what I am trying to explain. Trying to convince conventional media will not work. Your so called key guys want read the news until there is enough buzz every where. As long as common public is believing/waiting conventional media to go and attack VK, VK is safe.

    We have to make all those only referring to conventional media and try to be in conventional. media are real dinosaurs. This is real in here US for a good amount. By design conventional. media is at least one day or two hours late. So it is always old news.

    One more thing I want to make the record clear here. Trying to do this artificially will not work. I never said I’ll start this. (Because I have done things like this before, without real ground level push it will be always artificial) If there is at least two three guys really need to initiate this I’ll help (not just by posting and talking, and I do not have my own agenda here too. Sorry just a little one, have a little fun with VK). I know Donald also will have to help :-).

  143. Hey Donald,
    Just a little idea, I know that you are trying so hard to get some fund to implement your Donald code thingy, right? At the same time you want to make money using your copyrights. I am sorry, that’s not how IT world work.
    Why don’t you think about doing it Open Source way? Yes you have to sacrifice your copyright thing. But you can still make money using services and the likes if you really want to. More than any thing you have to give-up your old passion attitude if you want to involve in such a sharing and community oriented environment. But if you really want to see your thing going you need to look in to that kind of avenues. See those comps RedHat, Mandreak, SUSE, etc they make money (yes not like M$).
    Just go to few universities, put a notice about your project (give few gifts like few iPods, or whatever to initiate a momentum; you need to get to real geeks). Explain your views honestly; I hope you will get few guys to initiate. You don’t have to start with commercial grade font drawing part first. If you can’t convince few young innovative kid you want be able convince anyone. You won’t get support from Dept. Heads to do this I know. (Those JVP guys don’t go and ask Vice Chancellors to get university kids to do the campaign for them, do they? And also Prof: Tenanboam did not support Linus)

    If you don’t do this that means you want your cake and eat it your self, right? Then do it that way. Shut up your mouth, spend some money (your money that is) Implement your thing and sell it. I knew long long time ago one company called Microimage was doing that with a funny dongle to protect there product so hardly. I know because I wrote an app to a Singhala pager for a company I think no longer exists used there font system, for good sum of money at that time (I think it was the first singhala mobile communication device, It was developed by Motorola India).
    The point is I don’t know whether Microimage made any profit just by implementing Singala font system (proprietary), if they did not have any other real applications to market. So if you want to make propriety money you need to be a good IT business man, and you need a product line to fund it.
    Only other option is Open source as I explained above.
    If you don’t do either one of above, I will see you ranting in places like this for rest of your life. And go in to record as yet another guy just tried eat a piece of VK’s pie, and was not successful, and made VK a winner.
    So think about it…

  144. I have the copyrights over the character allocation table and commercial usage over that product.
    If you can use my table and make a million dollars why cant I get a royalty!!!

    There are other patents and copyrights owners for the final product
    Open source is secondary item

    Primary issue is to accept the fact that the present registered characterset is incomplete and incorrect. It is the typewriter technology

    The other option is to use the full character set like the latin script.

    input method will be QWERTY “JCA system” or Wijesekera keyboard
    What ever the input system the same sinhala caracter will appear

    Then write all the sinhala characters in to Illustrator format by a person who has some knowledge in typology and typography. For different weights about three sets are needed.

    Give the proper code points into the Sinhala and make software to access the abouve code points

    Back up this by a Sinhala Dictionary

    All this need funding. A grant. There are enough funding at ICT Research and innovation grants.

    This is a very wide subject and a project. The final product has to be given free to the public for non commercial activity.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  145. Dear Noam

    Send me your postal address to send the list of Sinhala characters
    You will be surprise to see the count
    You can get my Id from the web site

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  146. Worried about Future

    It is a pity to see that Mr. Donald Gaminitilake is only concerned about taking his personal agenda ahead and shown no interest in becoming a part of a wider initiative with goals of national importance.

    He is a typical Sri Lankan. His only worry is to get his own share from the money currently being wasted. He is not interested in anything else. I will not waste my time with him anymore.

    Noam Chomsky, thanks for your advice and guidance. Let me think of a way and come back to you.

  147. My personal view is allowing copyrights for any standard is a big problem in this industry. That will put unnecessary burden on using the standard. Basically there is no real intellectual thing in any standard anyway.(forgive me I am against software patent too) It is just agreeing on some kind of protocol, I will call you Donald and you call me Noam that’s it. None of the standards in information technology are perfect and ultimate. And also standards have to do some compromises based on feasibility, bargain power of the involved parties, etc. Most important part of the standard is it has to become the standard. What will make a standard a standard. People should follow it. People won’t follow it, if it is difficult to use/implement. People won’t follow it, if it costs too much to use. People won’t follow it if it is coming from unreliable source.
    Donald, I don’t want to see your “list of Sinhala characters” because your statement “You will be surprise to see the count” itself tells me the unfeasibility of your solution. I don’t want to be rude to you. But I can’t help. Do you know that there is a real company/guy http://www.moonshop.com. What do they do, they are selling land in moon, yes real state in fucking moon. They got the rights to it :-) So they are selling. To me you are also like that. (May be not exactly, because that guy I saw in TV he sold a piece of land to Bill Clinton also :-) So he is selling, you are not selling.. )
    In your code it seems like you are mapping all possible singhala character to a code. That is not engineering. That is the obvious answer any grade one student will give you. It need little more analysis than that. (I say little because any idiot in this world should not take 25 fucking years to do that analysis)
    So lastly what ever the singhala Unicode there is at fonts.lk is ok. It does not have this and that. That’s how standards are. Some how it is getting pushed thru peoples throat. My only problem is why it took 25 years to come up with some kind of sensible Standerd for singhala character mapping. What did VK Sam, Gihan D and all other people do last 25 years, how much money they spend on related projects/studies or what ever. Unicode consortium is more than 15 years old. How many years did it take for these IT experts to evaluate the Unicode option.

    I just got in to this site by an accident, and saw some VK Sam bashing here and there. Now I am arguing with Donald. I really don’t know the history behind these people and what is happening in SL lately IT industry things like that. But if VK and the gang is still in power then there is nothing really to know about it anyway. So I’ll stop continuing here since no one is ready to really fuck with VK Sam and the gang. But when ever you want a help on that I am ready.

  148. Hi Worried Guy,
    I did not see your post! let me know when you are ready..

  149. Naom,

    Do not leave this blog.

    Didn’t someone say that Donald will get it this way someday???? Donald has no sense of the country. He is seeking money, money and money. Nothing else. See his site on Sinhala akuru.org . He is advertising his annex there. Looks like you too are going to fade yourself like Dino did.

  150. Akuru.org is paid by my funds and I can publish any content on it.

    The problem Noam did not uunderstood is the Sinhala unicode is incorrect
    If Sinhala unicode is correct give me the code point for the sinhala character “DU”
    If Noam unable to give that location He will have to study the subject.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  151. Quote
    Donald Gaminitilake is only concerned about taking his personal agenda ahead
    Unquote

    This is correct My intention is to put correct Sinhala characters on IT. That is my agenda

    You have wasted 25 years and done nothing

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  152. “You have wasted 25 years and done nothing” Donnald.

    You also will ONLY rant, rant and rant for the next 2 years without any result. Do something rather than ranting.

  153. Donald,

    There is an ICT week next week and there are two conferences and an exhibition.

    http://www.cssl.lk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=2

    What you can do is to print a leaflet explaining what Dino did to you and distribute that among the crowd. It is better than ranting here. You may also give the URL to your site so if anyone interested can visit your site.

    Nobody can stop you distributing leaflets outside the hall. That is your democratic right.

  154. Who wants to mess around our authority in .lk domain registration? We are the directors. We are officially appointed.

    LK Domain Registry is incorporated. It is true that we are henchmen of Dino the Ancient

    List of Directors

    Gihan V. Dias
    T. Ashok Peiris
    Rohith Udalagama
    G. Harsha Wijewardhana
    V.K. Samaranayake
    Jayantha T. Fernando
    L.M. Chandana Weerasinghe

  155. All akuru sites are registered. We can reassign these to Donald for ” an exchange”

    akuru.assn.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.com.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.edu.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.grp.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.hotel.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.ltd.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.ngo.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.org.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.soc.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka
    akuru.web.lk registered to ICTA- Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka

  156. See how lucraticve the business is for us. Beside money, we have the full control as well.

    Facts at a Glance.
    New Domain Registration Charges

    The given pricing is per domain name and subject to 15% VAT at the time of invoicing
    Category

    1Y

    2Y

    5Y

    10Y
    CAT1 – Full Domain Package
    Top level domain including the following Second-Level Domains
    .com.lk, .org.lk, .hotel.lk, .assn.lk, .ltd.lk, .web.lk, .soc.lk, .grp.lk 5,000/- 9,500/- 20,000/- 30,000/-
    CAT2 – Top Level Domain Only
    e.g. domain.lk 3,000/- 5,700/- 12,000/- 18,000/-
    CAT3 – Second Level Domains*
    e.g. domain.com.lk
    domian.hotel.lk etc..
    (*Excluding the Domains coming under CAT4 or CAT5) 1,000/- 1,900/- 4,000/- 6,000/-
    CAT4 – Two Letter Domain Names And special names
    e.g. tv.lk
    And numeric names (2-7 digits) such 1234567.lk including the following Second-Level Domains
    .com.lk, .org.lk, .hotel.lk, .assn.lk, .ltd.lk, .web.lk, .soc.lk, .grp.lk 25,000/- 47,500/- 100,000/- 150,000/-
    CAT5 – Three Letter Domain Names And desirable names
    e.g. sun.lk
    And numeric names (8-10 digits) such 1234567890.lk including the following Second-Level Domains
    .com.lk, .org.lk, .hotel.lk, .assn.lk, .ltd.lk, .web.lk, .soc.lk, .grp.lk 10,000/- 19,000 40,000/- 60,000/-

  157. Who wants to mess around our authority? Nobody can rule over us. Not even the government. We are the government.

  158. How come people claim SLS 1134 is incomplete and incorrect when the same has been used very effectively in applications such as Optical Character Recognition and Handwriting Recognition?

    I think the people who make such claims are just blind.

    Some of these topics will be discussed in detail at the Language Processing and Human Computer Interaction thematic session of the International Information Technology Conference on Oct 12, 2006.

    Please check http://www.iitc.lk/programme.php

    Particularly these two papers will be interesting.

    On-line Sinhala Handwritten Character Recognition on Handheld Devices M.H.P. Ranmuthugala ,G.D.N.C. Pathiragoda , K.M.J. Karunaratne ,S.H.C. Jayasundara ,Gihan Dias, A.S. Karunananda

    A KNN based Algorithm for Printed Sinhala Character Recognition A.R.Weerasinghe, D.L.Herath, N.P.K.Medagoda

    People who claim SLS 1134 incomplete might attend this session and clear their doubts forever.

    Sinhala language is already there not only in computers but also in devices like mobile phones in so many different ways. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Sinhala Unicode and SLS 1134 is a complete faultless standard and it is the only way forward.

  159. Dot.lk is doing unethical acts

    Akuru.lk is registered with the icta and fees are not been paid.

    internatinal system is if the fees are not paid another person can get it. I have applied and dot.lk nor ICTA has sent me a reply.

    These days I am in Cochin India

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Cochin India

  160. Quote
    SLS 1134 is incomplete and incorrect when the same has been used very effectively in applications such as Optical Character Recognition and Handwriting Recognition?
    unquote

    I say so. Give the code point for “DU” in unicode or ISO

    Do not fool the public

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Cochin India

  161. Donald,

    Why don’t you attend the session and find out how ‘Du’ is not only been represented in Unicode (code point = 0DAF0D8B) but also how that can be character recognized.

    So you can stop lamenting from Oct 12 onwards.

    However, let us not forget that it is only possible to wake those who are sleeping. It is not possible to wake those who pretend to be sleep.

  162. Helaya,

    Donald is just kidding. He has nothing to talk about in serious. See his site akuru has been given a link from CrazyLanka site!!! He is just joking.

  163. Joker,

    Crazylanka.com is the suitable for Donald’s crazy akuru site. No need of fighting for akuru.lk as we don’t provide domains for idiotic ideas. We have reserved idiot.lk for Donald to have his personal profile.

  164. Akuru.org is a site that sells annexes. This Sinhala character table issue etc are only cover ups for that site. The main business is selling annexes.

    Donald might be making a fortune by selling his house to gullible foreigners. See how much he charges. More than Rs. 5,000 per day! Even many top hotels in Sri Lanka do not charge this much just for accommodation only.

    Donald also charges $ 3 (i.e. more than Rs. 300) per “light” breakfast. How much few hoppers cost? Might be around Rs. 50. So Donald makes a profit of Rs. 250 per person per day.

    Donald also talks so much about others paying VAT. Does he himself pay VAT and income tax for the money he is making by selling his annex?

    There are no issues about Sinhala Unicode etc. Sinhala Unicode is complete and by next February all major Operating systems will have Unicode. There are no issues about that at all.

    Donald exploits the unawareness of the typical Sri Lankan population to get some popularity for his businesses in other areas. He has been able to get his photograph and name in the newspapers, showing others he has a great interest in the area of integrating Sinhala to computers. He has even fooled esteemed magazines like Business Today.

    In reality, he has no national interest. He has only business interests and these are all his marketing work. He talks about patents, but nobody can obviously take patents for a “hodiya” that appears in the back of any “hodi potha”.

    Donald is a bigger conman than both my father Dino and Gihan D.

  165. Weldone son!!!!

    Now you are talking!!!! Now I can say you are my own son. Earlier I thought you must be a son of a (you know who) as you were dead silent when Donald pulled my pants down in public. I educated you in USA with smartly stolen government money and you have a duty to protect me and fight for me.

    Dinos ruled the earth for milllions of years. So when I die, you have to take over. I have formed other smaller versions of dinos everywhere in the country and they can’t survive without me as they are bloody fools. You need to take my legacy after me. You are a real son of a Dino.

    VK

  166. Yes, my father. I am always behind you. I know how hard you try to keep me in USA through the help of the Samsung guys.

    How come you do not give a key note speech at tomorrow’s SEARCC conference? Have they put a rule that only people less than 70 years can address the conference?

    By the way father Gihan D is going to speak about ‘Building IT Products – Where is Sri Lanka?’ This is something you should talk about. Not him. Never trust this guy father. He is after your post. You have to try hard to keep you post Dad. If you lose your post, I had to stop my studies and come back to Sri Lanka.

    God bless you Dad.

    OK Sam (Son of VK Sam aka Dino)

  167. code point = 0DAF0D8B
    Helaya these are just two code points registered in sinhala unicode not the correct code point for “DU”
    you can stll call this a typing sequence

    With this if you have a hidden character allocation table you can get the correct “DU”

    Also there is no sequence for the letter “KU” or “GU”

    Please donot fool the public.

    Like the german character umlaut a or u show us thw Unicode location in the unicode chart for “DU” “KU” and “GU”

    Donald
    Cochin

  168. Quote
    Akuru.org is a site that sells annexes.
    unquote

    Why worry about other peoples business.
    If I sell for 5000 or 10,000 it is my business and those who can afford will come to me.

    quote

    but nobody can obviously take patents for a “hodiya” that appears in the back of any “hodi potha”.

    unquote

    Not my list of Sinhala characters which is registered with the ISBN with copyrights.

    This is wht Dini missed when he registered his un8icode and SLSI 1134

    SLSI 1134 and sinhala unicode is incorrect and incomplete

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Cochin

  169. Let us all ponder,

    “A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.”
    — James Madison

    Helaya,

    Most people make claims here and do not provide proof. It’s a sorry current state of the culture. For the record, let me mention the problem I have with Unicode Sinhala.

    I do not know about SLS 1134. May be it is correct and complete. There is no way for me to know because it is not publicly available. (I saw the link Donald put out some time back. Thanks, Donald). Anyway, it has no real value. However, the Unicode codepage for Sinhala, which is also meant for network communication, is incomplete and introduces unnecessary complications. My wish was to have a way to transliterate between Unicode Sinhala and romanized Sinhala in a direct way, but I have given up such hopes.

    This is the primary reason the Open-source Pali group developed a smart font to display romanized Sinhala. Watching this forum and my experience with both the Unicode Sinhala group and the Linux group tells me this is the best decision given the way you guys communicate: Get into factions and waste time throwing mud at people and desecrate names like Naom Chomsky and Helaya. All this by hiding behind false names.

    COWARDS! — reminds me the day in 1983 when a fellow drove on Havelock road saying “Koti Gahanava” all the veerayas (including the kasippu mudalali ran into their houses. I had a hard time getting my 80-odd year father inside because he said rightly “Why should we hide? We should fight!”

    Samarajiva – I like your impartiality. You first added the email requirement to stamp out anonymity. (So I was told). Try this one: http://www.phpbb.com/ it really makes them identify. This is an exercise in democracy. We got to learn to be brave. The British left 50 years back. A sympathy vote made us slaves to aristocracy for fifty years. Now again we have a commoner as the President. The other one (preemaðaasa) and a prospective one (æþulaþmuðali) were blasted away by terrorists.

    I digress, back to Unicode Sinhala:
    Let me show you the errors in the Unicode page:
    Go to http://www.unicode.org/charts/
    Then click on Sinhala under Indic.

    The letters at codepoints 0DA5 and 0DA6 should not be there. I must say here though that this is not crippling for Sinhala. Unicode has ways to avoid them through decomposition. However, they introduce problems in supporting Pali. Both these letters belong to Ca Vargaya. (Ca Vargaya is one of five categories of Mixed Sinhala consonants: Post-alveolar consonants).

    By the way, let me tell you that the Sinhala alphabet is the easiest alphabet to learn. It could be described in words defining location of every letter without showing the shapes of the letters. It is the only dual-script language fully Unicode compliant, so far. Next up: Tamil.

    Back to Sinhala Unicode:
    The character at 0DA5 is sanyuga þaaluja naasikyaya. This is a ligature formed as follows:
    hal jayanna þaaluja naasikyaya = 0DA2 halkiriima 0DA4
    The character at 0DA6 is þaaluja naasikyaya bænði jayanna (Unicode and we all call it sanyaka jayanna). It is a ligature formed as follows:
    hal þaaluja naasikyaya jayanna = 0DA4 halkiriima 0DA2

    Mixed Sinhala alphabet means it is the combination of Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit. All three languages covered COMPLETELY. Looking at the Unicode codepage, it is obvious that this is an attempt to represent mixed Sinhala. (Sinhala has no mahapraana akuru. Listen to someone casually speaking in Sinhala. Pure Sinhala knows only one letter in Ca Vargaya: Jayanna. Even cayanna is foreign). I lament why the Standards Bureau scientists did not go to the nearest Temple or Church and ask the monk or priest whether this draft is correct. Either would have got the errors corrected immediately or in a day or two.

    I understand the reason for 0DA5. Its shape cannot be constructed by the keys in the Wijesekera Abiguda keyboard. But sanyaka jayanna? It is not a base character like sanyaka gayanna, sanyaka þayanna and sanyaka ðayanna (plus amba bayanna). It is only a Pali/Sanskrit shortened form and it CAN be made with Wjesekera (if so programmed).

    Unicode Sinhala even includes the Kundaliya. That says that this encoding was also meant to record ancient Pali and Sanskrit texts. In that case, it should include Jihvaa-muuliya too. For two reasons: 1. We already have Upadhmaaniiya for the sound similar to English F. 2. Both jihvaa muuliya and upadmaaniiya are allophones of visargaya and needed for Sanskrit. (Take note, you Sanskritizers).

    Then there are these more serious technical reasons:
    Unicode is still a concept. People need to sit down and re-write many programs – hundreds. I doubt our whiners will ever get to it. Read about UTF-8. This is what is used as the basis for all the re-writes.

    To get an idea of what entails read this:
    http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html and specially, “How do I have to modify my software?” Under it, essentially it says, Re-write your program. No way anyone is going to rewrite complex programs. They cost millions of dollars and years in America where it is done most. I am not talking about writing fonts. They took three years for that in Sri Lanka. It took me six months to do the Smart Font, working full time on it like 12 hours a day – just for an un-typographical master font.

    For me Unicode Indic is dead on arrival.

    Now, all the above is not against what is going to be discussed in this grand meeting that the fellow who claims to be Helaya says. It seems like it’s about OCR.

  170. Back in Lanka

    Did some research work on Malayalam
    Same problems are there like our Sinhala

    Getting back to history of modern malayalam (late 1800 to early 1900)
    Simiar to Sinhala it was German missionary unlike the Dutch and the English who did the language work in Kerala.

    Quote from Wikipedia

    Rev. Dr. Hermann Gundert (Stuttgart, February 4, 1814 – April 25, 1893 in Calw, Germany) was a German missionary and scholar, who compiled a Malayalam grammar book, Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam (1868), the first Malayalam-English dictionary (1872), and translated the Bible into Malayalam. He worked primarily on the Malabar coast, in Kerala, India. He was also a close friend of Malayalam critic and short story writer Vengayil Kunhiraman Nayanar.
    Hermann Gundert obtained a doctoral degree from Tübingen. In Kerala, he took a deep interest in the local culture and the Malayalam language, attempting a systematic grammar of the language. This was one of the prominent non-Sanskrit-based approaches to Indic grammar. Gundert is held in high regard to this day among linguistic experts in Kerala for the high scholastic aptitude exhibited in his work. He published two Malayalam journals, of which Rajya Samacharam is considered to be the first newspaper in Kerala.
    Though Gundert came to Kerala as a missionary, he is remembered today mainly for his literary contributions. In Thalassery (Tellicherry), people have honored him by a statue in the city.
    He was the grandfather of Hermann Hesse, German novelist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
    Unquote

    There are lots of work here in Lanka to promote all the basic indic languages.

    First we have to do the Sinhala correctly.
    Once this is done Lanka can take the leadership to develop other indic langauges.

    There are lots of work for the software developers in Lanka.
    Only if they understand my issue in Sinhala and support the truth.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  171. Malayalam:

    Good work Donald. Malayalam is the closest Indic language to Sinhala, at least in form. Just like for Malayalam, missionaries did great service for Sinhala. Our best modern time grammarian is, I believe, a Christian (priest?). Buddhist monks call him Theodore Unnaansee. He wrote the reference book on Sinhala grammar in 1930s. The older Buddhist monks studied his book, now out of print.

    As far as I am concerned, Sinhala for computers is already accomplished with Dual-script Sinhala (another name for good old romanized Sinhala). I have finished the version 1.0 of the smart font. It has over 1600 glyphs. Now it needs testers. I discovered accidentally that Adobe Photoshop CS displays Sinhala in all its complexity. That means InDesign supports it too.

    If there is any volunteer in Sri Lanka to manage testing it there, please contact: smartfonts@charter.net. It’s a good way to weigh it against Unicode Sinhala. It uses US (Sinhala) keyboard, which is optimized for typing Sinhala but could be used for English too.

    opportunity knocking:
    We also need a font developer partner to make typefaces. Any takers?

  172. Donald mahattayo,

    You asked for the code point for ‘Du’ in Sinhala Unicode. I gave the one. It is correct.

    If it is incorrect, you should show me the correct one. If you cannot show that keep your big mouth shut.

    You are the one who continues to fool the public, repeatedly saying there are no code points for characters like ‘Du’, ‘Ku’ etc when there are ones. Open your eyes and you will see.

    Please dont fool public and please dont waste this space making false arguments. If you have any personal grudge for anyone, this is not the place to settle such matters.

    It is pathetic that you have started mud slinging at people who do not agree with you.

    Do you think we dont know who post these mud slinging messages under different nick names?

  173. JC mahattayo,

    [q] I do not know about SLS 1134. May be it is correct and complete. There is no way for me to know because it is not publicly available. [uq]

    If you have done a simple Google search (any third grader will show you how to do that) you will find enough links to this document. It is funny how people say things are not available, even without searching for them.

    If you do not know how to do a Google search and cannot find a third grader to show you how, you can get it from http://www.fonts.lk.

  174. Donald continues to fool public implying that he does research also on Mayalayam. In fact whet he does is just cut and paste few paragraphs from somebody else had written in Wikipedia and that too does not have anything to do with the topic under discussion.

    If we are talking about introducing Sinhala to computers, what we should discuss is not anything about standardization (which had already been achieved) but about the possible Sinhala Unicode applications. Two of which will be presented in the IITC conference tomorrow. (Oct 12) at BMICH.

    Let us have a healthy and productive discussion on how to make these applications more useful than wasting our time on issues already settled long back.

    For example do we have to argue on issues like whether we should drive on the left or right of the road, whether earth is flat or round, or whether we should measure in feet or meters?

    Let us use this space to discuss something useful.

  175. Mr. Helaya
    I searched Google for SLS 1134 and got hundreds of results. One was revision 2 that would not download (perhaps because my Internet connection is too slow). Could you please ask the Third grader to give the exact URL for the standard?

    Thank you much. By the way, I could not find it inside http://www.fonts.lk either. Obviously, I am not good with Googling or searching the fonts site. Even so, I saw some explanations of the standard. Whatever it is, like I said earlier, what matters is the Sinhala Unicode page. That is what is applied to fonts, not the National standard.

    This is why everybody is talking about Unicode Sinhala and not SLS 1134 which was just a step to get there. I hope you understand and calm down too. By the way, do you have a first name called Anuradha?

  176. JC mahattayo,

    As explained so many times earlier, Sinhala Unicode = SLS 1134. It is one and the same.

    Are you also as stupid as Donald? Please dont try to nitpick. Pl see the bigger picture.

    Try this link.

    http://www.tscii.org/IETF/Examples/Sri Lankan Draft Standard for Sinhala – sls1134.pdf#search=”SLS 1134 pdf”

  177. From 174
    quote
    If it is incorrect, you should show me the correct one. If you cannot show that keep your big mouth shut.
    Unquote

    This is a good posting The “DU” “GU” or “KU” and many more Sinhala characters are not registered with the sinhala unicode or SLSI 1134 or Sinhala ISO

    When these are not registered in the SLSI 1134 or sinhala unicode or Sinhala ISO how come I give a code point.

    It is pathetic that you are not aware of the concepts and basics of OCR

    The OCR hardware scans the material and compares the image with the text matrix in the software. The character is analyzed in a Cartesian coordinate system on a pre-defined grid to identify the character.
    Once the shape of the character is determined, the program could conduct a search for similar character(s) in the character allocation matrix and thereby determining the character.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  178. Quote from 176
    Donald continues to fool public implying that he does research also on Mayalayam. In fact whet he does is just cut and paste few paragraphs from somebody else had written in Wikipedia and that too does not have anything to do with the topic under discussion.
    unquote

    There are so many facts in Malayalam and Sinhala resembling each other
    It was the christian missioneries that had made both Sinhala and Malayalam Dictioneries.

    Can you name one correct sinhala English Dic that has been published during the past five years
    Our Sinhala Encylopedia is not completed!

    You got to study the facts and honour them

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  179. Thank you. helaya mahaþþayoo.

    It is same as what is shown here:
    http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0D80.pdf

  180. Donald mahattayo,

    You close your eyes and complain the world is dark. I cant help it. I can only pity you.

  181. When you lose you run away from the problem
    Seek other excuses

    Like JC say

    http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0D80.pdf

    No one can see “DU” “KU” or ‘GU’ and many more not listed in the above chart or the Allocation table

    It is pity that the software developers too keep their eyes closed in this issue.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  182. Samsung gets deal to network Govt.

    The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka [ICTA] signed a contract with Samsung Networks Inc. to implement and manage the Lanka Government Network [LGN] project, for which funding has been provided by the Government of Korea. Present at the contract signing ceremony were Mr. Dae Hee Kim, Vice President – Samsung Networks Inc. and other Samsung officials; Mr. Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President, Professor V.K. Samaranayake, Chairman, ICTA, ICTA Board members and other ICTA officials.

    The LGN is a strategic project of the Re-Engineering Government program of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka which, functions under the Presidential Secretariat.

    The LGN would equip and digitally connect a large number of District and Divisional Secretariats,Ministries and key Government Departments to each other to ensure an interchange of information as well as to provide ICT based citizen services.

    The network will be a highly available, secure and reliable backbone that connects all the organizations (initially 325 locations) of the Government of Sri Lanka. The organizations will be equipped with Internet, Email and IP based government-to-government voice services. The project will also address the basic hardware and Local Area Network (LAN) needs of the connected government organizations including providing Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity to the LGN Hub. Additionally, a help desk, desk-side support and training will be supplied.

    The objectives of the LGN project are to facilitate secure communication networks among government institutes, including overseas representative offices and to provide centralized control and management of the network, thus reducing administration and support at agency sites. ICTA’s Re-engineering Government program will implement a number of enabling projects which will provide the fundamental requirements necessary for successfully implementing e-Services. These projects would interconnect the government, fulfill minimum ICT requirements of the government, provide a supporting application platform to deploy e-Services, build the ICT capacity of public officers, fulfill policy, standards and security requirements of the government and ensure the web presence of the government to provide information and services.

    In this respect, the Lanka Government Network will form the backbone infrastructure for the Government of Sri Lanka, being the enabler to fulfill the ICT requirements to link up all government agencies for seamless interaction and efficient services to citizens, thus creating a “Connected Government”.

  183. V K Samaranayake's Ghost

    Hoo hoooo hoooo…….

    Oya ithin keruwada mata Sunday Leader ekka??? Api dannawa lassanata gema denna harida??? Sam Sung walata thamay api ussala denne.

  184. EVERYBODY:

    Post 171: James Madison, 4th Pres. of US is called the Father of the Constitution. What he says is a bit hard to understand because of archaic English. Essentially, what he says is that if we get into factions or become eheyiyoos of leaders we will not achieve what is for the common good. (Looking at America today, we see it’s different from what he wished for it. The religious right, the Christian Taliban and the cultureless business lobby is ruling America today).

    I think we should heed Madison’s advice.

    Let’s honestly compare the existing Sinhala solutions:
    Let me explain how I use my computer daily for English and Sinhala.
    I have two keyboard layouts. US (English) that came in the computer and US (Sinhala) that I installed in it. What the latter does is providing the ability to type some letters in addition to English letters. (Pardon me for using romanized Sinhala next but you can figure it out with a little attention — suppressing hate, fear of defeat and anger helps too)

    In US (Sinhala), the keys q, t, d and z are demoted to AltGr (RightAlt) status. That is, you hold down the Right-hand side alt key to type them. In their stead, it has ä, þ, ð and æ at regular level. This was done after researching the frequency of occurrence of each letter in texts of the three languages, Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit.

    ä stands for visargaya or double-binðu.
    (Visarga is a consonant, not a vowel as some call it. Test it yourself. If it blocks air, then it is a consonant)
    þ is Old English letter Thorn
    ð is Old English letter Edh
    æ is Old English letter Ash.

    US (Sinhala) also provides several more letters to make it possible to type any of the four languages (Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit) at the same speed that a skilled English typist types (100 words per minute — good for a court transcriptionist). You can type English too with it but then you need to hold down AltGr for q, t, d and z, which lowers the speed.
    The other letters are:
    ñ kantaja naasikyaya (AltGr n)
    µ muurðhaja nayanna (AltGr m)
    ç þaaluja naasikyaya (AltGr ,)
    ø muurðhaja layanna (AltGr l)

    The key positions are same as in US-International except for the above flipping between AltGr and normal. So US (Sinhala) is not a necessity to type romanized Sinhala. You can do it today right now by enabling US-International in the Control Panel. That is what my correspondent tester Ven. Dr. Udagama Sumangala and I used for the past three years.

    CONCLUSION:
    Romanized Sinhala, that is Sinhala in Latin alphabetic letters, is possible just like any Western European language.

    WHAT IT GETS:
    If Romanized Sinhala successfully sits at Latin code pages (below Unicode codepoint 255), Then it has no need for any special programming on networks and software.

    Now, you say, JC, that is well and good, but I want to see Sinhala in Sinhala letters! You fail!! (laughter, applause, stone throwing, hooting by Peradeniya side).

    Hold on, you were too hasty in condemning me (my bloody, bald head emerging from the pile of rocks). We have crispy new OpenType technology to show Sinhala. I have the font! It shows Sinhala in my ugly letters.

    You shout back: You fraud. It is not Standards compliant. You are trying get us all imprisoned at Gitmo.

    I say wait, what standard? Respose: Unicode, you stupid man! (Is that helaya hiding under the table? I heard someone say stupid)
    I say it is Unicode compliant. Response: Show us!

    Go to: http://www.unicode.org/standard/principles.html
    and look for the heading: Conformance to the Unicode Standard:
    The five rules: Cha, cha cha, uh uh.

    1. Characters are from the common repertoire
    Yes, oh venerable Unicode, they are from Unicode database (European alphabetic scripts)

    2. Characters are encoded according to one of the encoding forms
    8-bits per code unit. (We snuck in to the front!)

    3. Characters are interpreted with Unicode semantics
    Yes. Code elements are presented as Unicode codepoints for whatever interpretation the applications want to do

    4. Unassigned codes are not used
    No. Only Unicode codepoints

    5. Unknown characters are not corrupted.
    No unknown characters used.

    So, what do you want us to do, JC?
    Response. Nothing, essentially. Just use romanized Sinhala and the smart fonts.

    Two-day silence. (for gathering and re-arming).

  185. The National ICT Week 2006 kicked off yesterday with a host of events organized by Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka [ICTA]. The e-Government Forum 2006: Capitalizing on Government ICT Infrastructure hosted over 80 Secretaries of Ministries and Heads of Government Departments.

    “The seminar commenced with Prof. V.K. Samaranayake, Chairman, ICTA making the introductory remarks. While giving a brief overview of ICTA’s e-Sri Lanka initiative, he stressed on the need for the participants to utilize the full potential of ICT available to the government.”

  186. from ICTA website… and Donald is waiting to be the next CEO.

    Transitional arrangements at ICTA

    The Board of Directors of ICTA at a special meeting held on Monday 31st July 2006 set in motion the following transitional arrangements until such time the CEO is recruited to ensure that the work of ICTA and e-Sri Lanka is continued without interruption.

    A Leadership Team, consisting of Program Directors Messrs Reshan Dewapura (Chair), Wasantha Deshapriya, Suresh Bartlett and the Legal Advisor Mr Jayantha Fernando was appointed to take all operational and management decisions that would normally have been taken by the CEO. Mr. Dewapura in his capacity as the Chair of the Leadership team will be the authorized signatory for ICTA.

  187. Donald,

    Are you a baby? How many times do I have to show you the code point of ‘Du’? It is there. I have given you the code in an earlier post. You cant see it because you decide to close your eyes. If you open your eyes like JC, you will see that.

    If Unicode cannot represent ‘Du’ please explain to us how we can use the same in handwriting and OCR applications? (as demonstrated yesterday at IITC)

    Go and sleep man. Dont waste our time and the web space talking nonsense like Wimal Weerawansa.

  188. Donald is a mental patient escaped from Angoda hospital.

    If we make him the CEO of ICTA that will be the end of ICT in this country. Donald is only good as a byte.

  189. Samsung gets deal to network Govt.

    Welldone dad! You did it. Bravo! I knew you would do it. Booo to Lasantha Wickramatunge. I am sooooo proud of you.

    Now you got your share, I do not have to come back to Sri Lanka. I can continue in US.

    Dino’s proud son

  190. Quote
    If Unicode cannot represent ‘Du’ please explain to us how we can use the same in handwriting and OCR applications? (as demonstrated yesterday at IITC)
    Unquote

    By Using a hidden table.

    You cannot perform any of the followings

    to cut and paste with note pad into word and then into helawadane and/or Thibas? further into linux? Apple using the sinhala unicode or SLSI 1134

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  191. Dear Readers,

    Please see the flag in front of Donald’s post. That means he is coming via a server in Finland.

    The one who made the posts nos. 184, 185, 187 and 188 too have come via a server in Finland.

    Do we have so many users from Finland?

    Or this tells us something else?

    Now you are sure who plays havoc here, wasting web space, under different funny names.

  192. 193 The flag issue has been solved sometime ago by the Admin

    This proves that Helaya knows nothing about IT or Unicode or communications systems

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  193. Donald,

    Before questioning other’s knowledge ask what you about IT.

    What do you know about IT? Have you stepped in to a university even when it was raining? You are only an O/L dropout who does not even know the basic of routing. You talk about educating others. First educate yourself. Just because you can speak few words in English you don’t become an intellectual.

    You give “pora talks” about Linux etc. Have you ever used a Linux PC? Do you at least know what are the popular Linux versions?

    Ohe danna Unicode and Linux!

    Go home and sleep man, without wasting our time.

  194. You have not answered 160 moved to closing eyes
    You have not answered 192 , moved to flags
    When Admin showed the colours of flags , you moved to O/L

    You are another “Katussa” who change colours – unable to face the truth.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  195. Corrrection for 196

    It has to be 180 not 160

    Donald

  196. Quote
    You give “pora talks” about Linux etc
    Unquote

    I never talk about any operating system I only talk about using Sinhala on any OS platform
    This is not possible simply because SLSI 1134 registered an incopmlete set of Sinhala characters.

    Helaya cannot prove all Sinhala characters are registered in UnicodeSinhala or in SLSI 1134 or in ISO. Helaya only protects Dinos unethical acts. Remember that your group will have to be responsible for your acts by fooling the public and wasting the funds of the public.

    Then you will remember the Dhammapada “Karakalata pau miriya miriya se …. Vidinakalata Duk dadiwei ginise”

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  197. Donald,

    You ask: Can you name one correct sinhala English Dic that has been published during the past five years
    Our Sinhala Encylopedia is not completed!

    This forum and thread is about using Sinhala in Computers. This is not the forum you are all the other questions under the sun. I am an IT professional and I speak on subjects I know of. Unlike you I do not want to speak of subjects I do not know.

    If you have any problems regarding dictionaries and encyclopedias ask from an expert on that field. There is no point to bring such questions here. You are the “katussa”, not me.

    If you dont know about please dont give “pora talks” about Linux. How can you talk about introducing Sinhala into an OS you have never ever seen?

    Linux kaluda sududa danne ne. Methana baila katha karanna enava.

    Donot fool the public Donald. Do and try selling kadala to school children. It is better than what you do here.

  198. Readers,

    Donald Says: Then you will remember the Dhammapada “Karakalata pau miriya miriya se …. Vidinakalata Duk dadiwei ginise”

    This pathetic fool you give “pora talks” about protecting Sinhala language and nation etc does not know even that Dhammapada is written in Pali, not in Sinhala.

    Donald modayo, that verse appears in “Loveda Sangarava” by Ven Vidagama Thero, not in Dhammapada. Dhammapada is a book written in Pali. Ask JC if you dont know anything about these matters.

  199. Quote from 199
    This forum and thread is about using Sinhala in Computers
    Unquote

    Sinhala computers need Dic , Enclyopedias and every thing relating to a language including all Sinhala characters in a correct format.

    Quote 199
    I am an IT professional
    unquote

    So we all can understand the quality of the IT guys in our country Sri Lanka.

    “Loveda Sangarava” by Ven Vidagama Thero, Thank you for the correction but stick to the contents.

    Donald Gaminitillake
    Colombo

  200. Please continue your discussion in the thread titled Software Issues in Sri Lanka Part 5:
    http://www.lirneasia.net/2006/10/software-issues-in-sri-lanka-part-5/