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Write Sinhala Application Software

The Attempt

This website features an attempt to use Sinhala Language in communicating with the user. For this purpose I have chosen Visual basic - a very simple programming language that all programmers and novice in programming are comfortable with.

 Why Do It?

The reason for using Sinhala language is that it would enable people (specially the children) to interact with the computer more freely and thereby improve there knowledge on computer based applications. For this purpose I started with some simple Computer Games. But this is only a starting point of such usage.

Are Source Codes Available?

All of you are welcome to try to attempt the same. Therefore I have included the source code of most of the programs. At the moment the source codes for all the games are not available here because I have written them with minimum comments and not much of checking with the source code too. So I hope you are patient enough to wait until I complete them and comment them so that you can go through the source code without much difficulty.

What Type of Font to Use?

The major problem faced by me at this moment is that the availability of Sinhala fonts. Although there are free fonts on the internet, they do not have the capacity to cater for all the Sinhala characters. For the demonstration purpose I have used the font "kaputa.ttf"  from htttp://www.kaputa.com, but it has some drawbacks. For the moment we can write most of the Sinhala words using it. You can download this font from www.kaputa.com or from http://www.info.lk

The second-type of fonts are, those that come in dual form (normal and supplement). These fonts cannot be used in Vb where you have to set only one font type per control. (e.g. for the text box etc.)

The best option is that to use the font Manel  (DL-Manel-bold.-x). But as far as I know, It is not available on the internet. Therefore I have no right to put it on my site too. But It is a common fact that most University Students  use the font Manel for their report writing since it cater for all Sinhala characters in  a single font file.

So it is up to you to find  a suitable font for the purpose. Also do not hesitate to notify me your progress and any information you would like to share.

Devonian Chip

[email protected]

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