The Adopt-a-Character Program has awarded a grant to support development of proposals for encoding the following three historic scripts in the Unicode Standard:

• Book Pahlavi, an Aramaic-based script important to Zoroastrian and Parsi communities worldwide
• Persian Siyaq Numbers, a numerical system used in Iran from the 9th to 20th centuries for accounting and administration
• Uighur, a script used in the region spanning Uzbekistan to Mongolia from the 8th to 19th century.

The work will be done by Anshuman Pandey under the direction of Deborah Anderson (SEI, UC Berkeley) and Rick McGowan (Unicode Consortium).

The Adopt-a-Character Program has awarded a grant to support further development of the following three historic scripts in the Unicode Standard:

• Dhives Akuru, a Brahmi-based script formerly used to write the Maldivian language in the Maldive islands
• Elymaic, an Aramaic-based script formerly used in the region southeast of the Tigris river in Iran
• Khwarezmian, a script formerly used in the northern part of Uzbekistan and the adjacent areas of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan

This grant will fund the development of proposals for encoding scripts that can be included in the Unicode Standard. The work will be done by Anshuman Pandey under the direction of Deborah Anderson (SEI, UC Berkeley) and Rick McGowan (Unicode Consortium).

The Adopt-a-Character program has awarded a grant to support further development of the following four Indic scripts in the Unicode Standard:

• Hanifi Rohingya, a script in current use in Myanmar and Bangladesh
• Nandinagari, a Brahmi-based historic script formerly used in South India
• Old Sogdian, a group of historic scripts formerly used in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and Western China
• Sogdian, derived from Old Sogdian, a group of historic scripts formerly used in Central Asia

The goal of this grant is to enable the development of encoding proposals that can be included in the Unicode Standard. The work will be done by Anshuman Pandey under the direction of Deborah Anderson (SEI, UC Berkeley) and Rick McGowan (Unicode Consortium).

The first grant of funds from Unicode’s Adopt-a-Character program has been awarded to UC Berkeley’s Script Encoding Initiative (SEI), for the first two phases of a project to include Mayan hieroglyphs as Unicode characters.

Thanks go to our sponsors for providing funds to support this grant. Adopting a character helps the Unicode Consortium in its goal to support the world’s languages.

Mayan hieroglyphs were used from 250 BCE until the 1500s. Mayan textual records include historical, literary, religious, and mythological information, as well as a sophisticated mathematical system on par with that of the Romans. Mayan astronomical records continue to capture the attention of astronomers today. Including Mayan hieroglyphs as Unicode characters will allow them to be used on computers around the world. See more about Mayan.

Mayan is a complex script, requiring special support in layout and presentation. The first phase is a catalog and analysis of the Dresden codex, resulting in a draft set of Unicode atomic signs and composition mechanisms needed for full Mayan text. The second phase is based on that analysis: preparation of a proposal for layout and presentation mechanisms in Unicode text, using those atomic elements. These two phases are to be completed in 2017.

The Henry Luce Foundation has made a grant to the Unicode Consortium in support of three meetings between Unicode specialists, experts, and user communities in Mongolia and China. The meetings, which will take place from 2015 to 2017, will discuss encoding issues relating to specific scripts in the region, such as Mongolian Square and Soyombo. The goal of the meetings is to move the scripts forward in the encoding process, so scholars and the relevant user communities will eventually be able to create, send, and search materials in these scripts electronically. The project is headed by Dr. Deborah Anderson, Technical Director of the Consortium, and Project Leader of the UC Berkeley Script Encoding Initiative.

For information about previous grant support by the Henry Luce Foundation to the Unicode Consortium, see Foundation Grants.