Indian Script Code for Information Interchange: Difference between revisions

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{{IndicText}}

'''Indian Script Code for Information Interchange''' ('''ISCII''') is a coding scheme for representing various writing systems of [[India]]. It encodes the main [[Indic script]]s and a Roman transliteration. The supported scripts are: [[Assamese script|Assamese]], [[Bengali script|Bengali]], [[Devanagari]], [[Gujarāti script|Gujarati]], [[Gurmukhi]], [[Kannada script|Kannada]], [[Malayalam script|Malayalam]], [[Oriya script|Oriya]], [[Tamil script|Tamil]], and [[Telugu script|Telugu]]. ISCII does not encode the writing systems of India based on [[Arabic]], but its writing system switching codes nonetheless provide for [[Kashmiri]], [[Sindhi language|Sindhi]], [[Urdu]], [[Persian language|Persian]], [[Pashto]] and [[Arabic]]. The Arabic-based writing systems havewas subsequently been encoded in the [[Perso-Arabic Script Code for Information Interchange|PASCII]] encoding.

The Brahmi-derived writing systems are mostly rather similar in structure, but have different letter shapes,. soSo ISCII encodes letters with the same phonetic value at the same codepoint, overlaying the various scripts. For example, the ISCII codes 0xB3 0xDB represent [ki]. This will be rendered as कि in Devanagari, as ਕਿ in Gurmukhi, and as கி in Tamil. The writing system can be selected in rich text by markup or in plain text by means of the ATR code described below.

One motivation for the use of a single encoding is the idea that it will allow easy [[transliteration]] from one writing system to another. However, there are enough incompatibilities that this is not really a practical idea. See [http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/multi_sys/exist_codes.php#Interchange About ISCII].

ISCII is a fixed-lengthstateful 8-bit encoding. The lower 128 codepoints are plain [[American Standard Code for Information Interchange|ASCII]], the upper 128 codepoints are ISCII-specific. In addition to the codepoints representing characters, ISCII makes use of a codepoint with mnemonic ATR that indicates that the following byte contains one of two kinds of information. One set of values changes the writing system until the next writing system indicator or end-of-line. Another set of values select display modes, such as bold and italic. ISCII does not provide a means of indicating the default writing system.

ISCII has not been widely used outside of certain government institutions and has now been rendered largely obsolete by [[Unicode]]. Unicode does use a separate block for each Indic writing system, and it largely preserves the ISCII layout within each block.

has now been rendered largely obsolete by [[Unicode]]. While using a separate block for each Indic writing system, Unicode does, however, largely preserve the ISCII layout within each block.

== External links ==