Help:Multilingual support (Burmese)

The Burmese script is used in Burma for the Burmese language and minority languages of Burma. Because of the underdevelopment of Burma and problems with the encoding system, support for this script is rare.

Complex text support
Since the Burmese script derives from the Brahmi script, you need to enable complex text support to properly view Burmese script. To check whether you have enabled complex script support, you can use the following comparison. For instructions on how to enable complex text rendering, see Help:Multilingual support (Indic). Also, if you are a Windows user, you may need an updated Uniscribe version (XP SP2 and newer versions support Burmese) - for instructions on how to update Uniscribe, see this page.

(Note that this example uses the Unicode 5.1 model - for more information on the different models, see below.)

Encoding models
In the history of Burmese on computers, there were many ways and problems to deal with the complex features required by this script.

In Unicode 1.0, the range the Burmese script is now using was used for Tibetan script. However, it was removed in Unicode 1.1, and re-added in Unicode 2.0 in a different range. No Unicode fonts that assume the 1.0 encoding are known, so problems with this are not to be expected.

Burmese script was officially encoded in Unicode 3.0. It didn't get much use, and many websites continued to use images or proprietary fonts to support the Burmese script. The encoding was deemed inappropriate for minority scripts of Burma, and so a new model was introduced in Unicode 5.1. Because of this, Unicode Burmese sites are split between these two and other proprietary encoding models, which makes proper viewing of the Burmese script even harder.

Fonts
There are various Unicode fonts which contain Burmese script.
 * Padauk 2.8, developed by SIL International supports Burmese, two liturgical languages (Pali and Sanskrit) and four minority languages (Karen dialects, Shan, Mon and Rumai Palaung). It has been updated to support the full Myanmar script range of the Unicode 6.0 standard.
 * Parabaik and Parabaik Sans
 * Myanmar3
 * Myanmar2

Keyboarding in Burmese
ThanLwinSoft provides a native Windows input method called Ekaya, which is freely available. There is also a Keyman keyboard layout available from ThanLwinSoft, and you can download a Windows keyboard file from the Burma Unicode research center. If you can't use either for some reason, you can use the character map to enter Burmese.

Burma Text Input
Instead of mapping keyboard layout character directly, phonetic input method uses romanised words to represent Burmese syllabary. It is easier to input Burmese script for beginners. input system chooses appropriate characters and generally works for most Burmese fonts in Unicode as well as in ASCII. is portable Windows plugin (using some form of key remapping script) which enables input of Burmese syllables using an N-gram romanized input model. is an ASP.NET server control that lets the user enter Burmese character text phonetically or as in typewriter layout. The demo version of BurglishTextBox (broken link) allow to enter Burmese script online without installing any software.