RE: International Components for Unicode - Viet Nam

Thanks Quan for these several important points - please read down the page
for all the info and links. Sorry for some of you that we are getting a bit
technical. Thanks so much for these timely answers though.

Subject: RE: [WG-Unicode] Re: [OSS] International Components for Unicode - Viet Nam
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 01:31:47 -0500
From: nguyenq1@netscape.net

Hi,

Incidentally, I've been working, with several other parties, on corrections to erroneous locale vi data in ICU data version 2.8. I
plan to submit the final data by this Friday so that it can be incorporated into version 3.0, on which Sun's upcoming Java 1.5.0
will base their locale vi data.

Please read my answers to some of your questions below.

Regards,
Quan

Stefan Probst <stefan.probst@opticom.v-nam.net> wrote:

>Good Morning,
>
>while not directly Unicode, may I add another issue in this context:
>Are there official Vietnamese standards about where to place the tone
>marks, i.e. if there are more than one vocal in a word, over which one
>should the tone mark be placed?

Yes, there's a system for that: http://vietlex.com/vietnamese/vietnamese_files/quytacbodau.html

>I learned from my daughter, that the rule is something like: it should be
>the middle one, and in case it is an even number, then it is the one to the
>right of the middle. But is there a standard, that explains it clearly?
>TCVN-xxxx?
>
>Cheers,
>Stefan
>
>
>
>At 23:24 10.02.2004 +0000, Vern Weitzel wrote:
>-------------------------
>>I was introduced to the website of International Components for Unicode
>>which is hosted by IBM at http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/
>>
>>The site contains Interenationalisation packages for a number of languages
>>including Vietnamese. This information is, I understand, used with a
>>number of platforms, apparently including Microsoft (?). Apple is now
>>using ICU
>>formatting. The latest version 2.8 was released in November.

All the major computer industry players use ICU for their locale data.

>>
>>I have some questions about the information that is given for Viet Nam and
>>as a non-expert in that language, I would like to ask some experts.
>>
>>The locale information for Viet Nam is on the Locale Explorer
>>http://oss.software.ibm.com/cgi-bin/icu/lx
>>
>>and the specific page for viet Nam is:
>>
>>http://oss.software.ibm.com/cgi-bin/icu/lx/en/utf-8/?_=vi&SHOWCountries=1#Countries
>>
>>My first question is whether MOST or TCVN have had a chance to input
>>information to
>>this library.
>>
>>I have some specific questions.
>>
>>I am not aware that the sort order (plain ` ? ~ ' .) has been formalised by
>>the Government of Viet Nam. My impression, discussing this with officials
>>from the
>>Ministry of Science and Technology a couple years ago was that this was
>>not yet
>>established.

You can visit http://javavietnam.org forum, where there are ongoing discussions about all aspects of Vietnamese locale, including
collation rules.

The website http://vietunicode.sf.net also addresses some of the issues.

>>
>>Second, in the regional display, it is not commonly the case now that the
>>sylables
>>in country country names are separated by dashes. In fact the format is
>>inconsistent.
>>Sometimes one word, sometimes no dashes and occasionally still dashes. In
>>general,
>>dashes in words used to be a format common in the South 30 years ago but
>>as far as I
>>know, this practice has disappeared. Some of the formal names, for
>>instance Australia
>>and USA are a little unfamilair to me. I do not see that there is room for
>>alternate
>>forms.

We address this in the locale data. The updated data will show country and language namese without the hyphens, with only a few
exceptions.

>>
>>January can be Tháng một or Tháng giêng are alterante forms. But I had
>>assumed that Tháng giêng was preferred.

This is interesting. I'm sure the Vietnamese Java user group, who has been working on the locale vi data for Java, thought about
this, but they picked "tháng một" over "tháng giêng". I check with them again about this.

>>I understand that there is some
>>potential for confusion with days in the lunar calendar. Which raises the
>>important
>>problem in Viet Nam that we use both the Gregorian and Lunar calendars
>>buty ICU appears
>>to allow only one of these.
>>
>>Finally, I am a little surprised that no ICU libraries exist for Khmer and
>>Lao.
>>

To facilitate co-ordination regarding the introduction of OSS SW in Vietnam

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