SEAlang Library Burmese - Karen - Mon - Shan Font Notes SEAlang Library resources for Burmese, Karen, Mon, and Shan now conforms to Unicode 5.1.

Unicode 5.1 finally allows appropriate encoding of Karen, Mon, and Shan texts, but has also changed the rules slightly for the way that Burmese / Myanmar texts are encoded.  You must install a Unicode 5.1-compliant font.  As of September, 2008, our choices are:

--  Padauk from scripts.sil.org/Padauk.     This is the only font that works properly with Mon, Shan, and Karen.

--  Myanmar3 and Parabaik from www.zawgyi.org

All three fonts have minor rendering problems.  We are actively working with the font designers to fix these problems, so you must use the latest available version.

On Windows, these fonts require a relatively recent (~2 years) version of the Uniscribe rendering engine usp10.dll (supplied here as usp10.zip.  If rendering looks right, you already have it installed.  If not,

-- go to c:\windows\system32

-- rename usp10.dll to usp10.old

-- unzip and copy usp10.dll in its place

-- tell Windows "yes" (you really want to do this).

-- you may need to reboot.

Relatively old Windows systems will automatically restore the original file.  If that happens, you must use a usp10.dll installer (we'll provide one soon). Keyboards / Input Methods Please go to www.thanlwinsoft.org, and/or the other Myanmar font sites mentioned above.  Note that Unicode key-entry ordering is different from traditional typing order.  Some find it hard to convert to, but many people find it easier to learn.