Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange

Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange (TSCII) is a coding scheme for representing the Tamil script. The lower 128 codepoints are plain ASCII, the upper 128 codepoints are TSCII-specific. After long years of being used on the Internet by private agreement only, it was successfully registered with the IANA in 2007.^[1]

TSCII encodes the characters in visual (written) order, paralleling the use of the Tamil Typewriter.

Unicode has used the logical order encoding strategy for Tamil, following ISCII, in contrast to the case of Thai, where the visual order encoding grandfathered by TIS-620 was adopted.

The government of Tamil Nadu endorses its own TAB/TAM standards for 8-bit encoding and other, older encoding schemes can still be found on the WWW.

The free etext collection at Project Madurai uses the TSCII encoding, but has already started to provide Unicode versions.

History

The need for a common encoding for Tamil was felt by members of various mailing list based forums in mid-1990s, as there were multiple custom coded fonts were prevalent in those forums. While some of the commercial encodings were popular than the others, they were not accepted by wider community due to conflicting commercial interests. While Unicode was accepted by most as the future standard, most of the desktop systems at that time were still not capable of handling Unicode for Tamil language, and an interim 8-bit encoding was required.

A separate mailing list for discussion of such encodings ([email protected]) was created in 1997 to initiate this discussion, starting with an email written by Dr.K.Kalyanasundaram to the popular Tamil author Sujatha who headed the committee for standardization of Tamil keyboard.^[2] This forum quickly attracted enthusiastic participants from across the globe, including several prominent Tamil scholars. Archives of these discussion are maintained by INFITT.^[3]

Subsequent to publishing TSCII, most of the members of [email protected] mailing list became part of INFITT, which is a wider initiative to bring in standardization and continued development in various areas of Tamil computing.

Codepage layout

TSCII

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
8_	௦ 0BE6 128	௧ 0BE7 129	ஸ்ரீ 0BB8 0BCD 0BB0 0BC0 130	ஜ 0B9C 131	ஷ 0BB7 132	ஸ 0BB8 133	ஹ 0BB9 134	க்ஷ 0B95 0BCD 0BB7 135	ஜ் 0B9C 0BCD 136	ஷ் 0BB7 0BCD 137	ஸ் 0BB8 0BCD 138	ஹ் 0BB9 0BCD 139	க்ஷ் 0B95 0BCD 0BB7 0BCD 140	௨ 0BE8 141	௩ 0BE9 142	௪ 0BEA 143
9_	௫ 0BEB 144	‘ 2018 145	’ 2019 146	“ 201C 147	” 201D 148	௬ 0BEC 149	௭ 0BED 150	௮ 0BEE 151	௯ 0BEF 152	ஙு 0B99 0BC1 153	ஞு 0B9E 0BC1 154	ஙூ 0B99 0BC2 155	ஞூ 0B9E 0BC2 156	௰ 0BF0 157	௱ 0BF1 158	௲ 0BF2 159
A_	NBSP 00A0 160	ா 0BBE 161	ி 0BBF 162	ீ 0BC0 163	ு 0BC1 164	ூ 0BC2 165	ெ 0BC6 166	ே 0BC7 167	ை 0BC8 168	© 00A9 169	ௗ 0BD7 170	அ 0B85 171	ஆ 0B86 172		ஈ 0B88 174	உ 0B89 175
B_	ஊ 0B8A 176	எ 0B8E 177	ஏ 0B8F 178	ஐ 0B90 179	ஒ 0B92 180	ஓ 0B93 181	ஔ 0B94 182	ஃ 0B83 183	க 0B95 184	ங 0B99 185	ச 0B9A 186	ஞ 0B9E 187	ட 0B9F 188	ண 0BA3 189	த 0BA4 190	ந 0BA8 191
C_	ப 0BAA 192	ம 0BAE 193	ய 0BAF 194	ர 0BB0 195	ல 0BB2 196	வ 0BB5 197	ழ 0BB4 198	ள 0BB3 199	ற 0BB1 200	ன 0BA9 201	டி 0B9F 0BBF 202	டீ 0B9F 0BC0 203	கு 0B95 0BC1 204	சு 0B9A 0BC1 205	டு 0B9F 0BC1 206	ணு 0BA3 0BC1 207
D_	து 0BA4 0BC1 208	நு 0BA8 0BC1 209	பு 0BAA 0BC1 210	மு 0BAE 0BC1 211	யு 0BAF 0BC1 212	ரு 0BB0 0BC1 213	லு 0BB2 0BC1 214	வு 0BB5 0BC1 215	ழு 0BB4 0BC1 216	ளு 0BB3 0BC1 217	று 0BB1 0BC1 218	னு 0BA9 0BC1 219	கூ 0B95 0BC2 220	சூ 0B9A 0BC2 221	டூ 0B9F 0BC2 222	ணூ 0BA3 0BC2 223
E_	தூ 0BA4 0BC2 224	நூ 0BA8 0BC2 225	பூ 0BAA 0BC2 226	மூ 0BAE 0BC2 227	யூ 0BAF 0BC2 228	ரூ 0BB0 0BC2 229	லூ 0BB2 0BC2 230	வூ 0BB5 0BC2 231	ழூ 0BB4 0BC2 232	ளூ 0BB3 0BC2 233	றூ 0BB1 0BC2 234	னூ 0BA9 0BC2 235	க் 0B95 0BCD 236	ங் 0B99 0BCD 237	ச் 0B9A 0BCD 238	ஞ் 0B9E 0BCD 239
F_	ட் 0B9F 0BCD 240	ண் 0BA3 0BCD 241	த் 0BA4 0BCD 242	ந் 0BA8 0BCD 243	ப் 0BAA 0BCD 244	ம் 0BAE 0BCD 245	ய் 0BAF 0BCD 246	ர் 0BB0 0BCD 247	ல் 0BB2 0BCD 248	வ் 0BB5 0BCD 249	ழ் 0BB4 0BCD 250	ள் 0BB3 0BCD 251	ற் 0BB1 0BCD 252	ன் 0BA9 0BCD 253	இ 0B87 254
	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F

In the table above 80 is U+0BE6 TAMIL DIGIT ZERO, which has been accepted in Unicode version 4.1. A0 is the NO-BREAK SPACE. The codes AD and FF are unassigned.

Conversion Tools

You can convert UTF-8 encoded documents to TSCII using the GNU iconv tools as follows,

$ iconv -f utf-8 -t tscii hello.utf8 > hello.tscii

Whereas conversion from TSCII to UTF-8 is done by interchanging -f and -t flags.

References

1. http://www.iana.org/assignments/charset-reg/TSCII
2. http://www.infitt.org/tscii/archives/msg00001.html
3. http://www.infitt.org/tscii/archives/maillist.html

External links

• TSCII Start Page
• Unicode Technical Note #15 Text conversion From TSCII 1.7 to Unicode
• INFITT (International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil)
• TSCII to Unicode Online & Webpage Conversion
• Padma – Mozilla extension for transforming TSCII to Unicode