The government of Myanmar has decided to switch its text encoding to unicode from Zawgyi. This is part of its transition to e-government, since Zawkyi encoding does not comply with the international text encoding system.

The government has also ordered all of the telecom operators in the country to change their Zawgyi-encoded text messages over to unicode. Many companies hesitate to do this because most of their subscribers use Zawgyi-encoded fonts. Thus, the new standards will only take effect beginning October 1 of this year. According to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the operators must use unicode for their SMS, service guides, Facebook pages, and websites, replacing Zawgyi-encoded fonts.

The government has further ordered smartphone operators to import only devices that are compatible with unicode. Unicode has many advantages over Zawgyi. It can store data systematically, it is easier to search stored data, it is able to render text in alphabetical order, gives access to Google translation services, and also supports ethnic languages. The Ministry said that it is cooperating with the Myanmar Computer Federation to conduct awareness campaigns and distribute software that will help users change over to unicode.

Source: Myanmar Business Today

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