Malayalam Unicode

{ It is said that the ancient native Americans used smoke to communicate. The color size and shape of the smoke cloud having different meaning. The drums of Africa, Trumpet, Whistle are other examples. The Morse code used for communication is composed of 'dits' and 'dahs', a standardised sequence of which represents a letter each of the English Alphabet. A similar representation of English Alphabet can be seen in the Braille system of characters in rectangular blocks called cells with tiny palpable bumpy dots whose number and arrangement in the cell distinguish one character from another and represent a letter. }

What is Unicode?

A computer basically interprets only a combination of numbers composed of 16 bit, 32 bit and 64 bit ones and zeros, each representing a letter in the English Alphabet. Though there was a confusion in the beginning due to the variety of languages in computers, the system was standardized in the ASCII code's encoding System. But this was available only in the English language. With the formation of the Unicode Consortium a similar method of encoding for all languages of the World came into being. A unique number was allotted to every letter in all the languages around the World.

The code points from 128 x 9 = 1152 (2304 to 3455) is allotted to nine Indian languages  of which128 code points 3328 to 3455 has been allotted for the Malayalam Lipi. Based on this each Malayalam letter in the Aksharamala including swaras, swara-chihnams, vyanjanams etc were each allotted a number.

A logical question would be as to how the same keyboard used for the English language which had only 26 letters could accommodate the Malayalam Aksharamala with its 52 letters. One key in the English letter accommodated a small as well as the capital  for that letter, switching between the two being carried out with the use of Shift key. Based on this principle one swara and its swara-chihnam on the left-fingered side and one vyanjanam (Gharam) with its Athigharam  on the right-fingered keys was accommodated in one key, with it'd Mridu and Ghosham close to it on the upper row. Similarly, all letters. The principle of splitting koottaksharams and joining it with a chandrakkala in the typewriter puthiya-lipi came to the rescue in this aspect, but the difference between the letters joined by a chandrakkala in the type written document from the digital letters being that, such a procedure led to rendering of proper koottaksharam letters in the computer. That too, with no necessity to have additional keys on the keyboard. So also, the nta was obtained by joining vdJ (no additional keystroke when compared to transliteration). Chillaksharam are rendered here using a similar key combination consisting of the vynjanam+d+]. That covers all Malayalam letters of any number of combinations. In-script keyboard also incorporates Malayalam digits.

Let us not go into the drawbacks of the previous system of Malayalam typing, because the role they played in bringing about the usage of Malayalam in computer is what lead to the  demand for standardization of the system in In-script method and its implementation by the Unicode Consortium.