Doing a little more in Sri Lanka....

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2005/02/02 20:44 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2005/02/02/365993.aspx

It is all public now....

Read all about it, from two papers in Sri Lanka:

The Daily Mirror (28 Jan 2005): Microsoft partners Govt. for technology support for tsunami recovery effort (pay site)

The Daily News (29 Jan 2005): Microsoft Develops Sinhala Software (free site)

The idea was simple enough. Sinhalese was always on Microsoft's language roadmap (previously discussed here) as one of the many languages to ship in Longhorn. And not everything was completely done. But given the circumstances, support for Sinhalese was needed a bit more urgently to help with the healing process in areas affected by the ravages of tsunami.

Obviously much more has happened along the lines of financial relief efforts from people around the world and people at Microsoft (plenty of coverage has been happening about that all around the blogosphere).

But working to make sure it will be easier to display, render, type, search, sort, save, and print information in Sinhalese is yet another small way that we were able to help the long road to recovery.

According to Lalith Weeratunga (Secretary to the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka), "Microsoft's contribution is of enormous value to the reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts which are currently under way in Sri Lanka."

I can't take credit for this effort; my role in the project was a minor one. But to the people who did the real work here (and you know who you are!), I am in awe of your efforts. And I am proud to be working for the company that helped to make it happen. You are truly amazing, and I am proud to be working with all of you....

This post bought to you by "ඔ" (U+0d94, a.k.a. SINHALA LETTER OYANNA)

# SBC on 2 Feb 2005 7:43 PM:

# Jinath on 2 Feb 2005 8:39 PM:

yes MS doing a grate job in sri lanka
thanks MS
JINATH
MVP

# Michael Kaplan on 2 Feb 2005 9:18 PM:

Hello SBC -- cool link, and it is great that you too are doing many things to help.

Hi Jinath -- I definitely don't want to consider Sri Lanka a "line item" that can be crossed off (if you know what I mean), now that we have done this job to enable lots of usage. But it is great to know that efforts there are well received. It was a very gratifying project to be involved with....

# Jinath on 2 Feb 2005 11:43 PM:

yes,
there are months of work to be done.
http://www.cnosrilanka.org/

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referenced by

2010/01/25 Doing a little more in Haiti....

2007/09/14 A&P of Sort Keys, part 4 (aka It isn't a race but let's make an EXCEPTION and cross the Finnish line)

2006/08/18 Creation of transliterating input methods

2005/11/28 Custom keyboard, custom language?

2005/05/04 Collation data -- must be stable, but it must not stand still

2005/03/30 What does the the third letter in GIFT stand for?

2005/03/20 Mixed feelings about the splitting out of features on Longhorn

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