The "Iskoola Pota" Unicode Sinhala font released by Microsoft.
It is a Unicode font developed by Microsoft , designed to accurately represent Sinhala characters on digital platforms. Iskoola Pota is widely utilized in various digital applications, including word processing software, web design, and mobile devices, to enable Sinhala speakers to communicate effectively in their native language online. Its clear and legible design makes it a popular choice for both professional and personal use, contributing to the preservation and promotion of the Sinhala language in the digital age. [19]
- Tusitha Randunuge and Niranjan Meegammana at http://www.kaputa.com released Kaputa Unicode Fonts and Keyboard drivers.
2004-2006
- Formation of Sinhala Unicode Committee standardized Sinhala Keyboards bringing in developers Thibus, Helawadana and e fusion Pvt ltd, Lakehouse, Government Printer, Colombo and Moratuwa Universities, ICTA and SLS policy makers.
- Sinhala Unicode Group a community group founded by Niranjan Meegammana, starts popularizing use of Sinhala Unicode and provides support and collaboration as a community initiative. This active group helped solving many technical issues and impact taking Sinhala Unicode to masses. [20]
- http://www.gov.lk the first Sinhala Unicode web site developed by Nirnajan Meegammana for Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) at efusion pvt ltd. Inspires the government of Sri Lanka to use Sinhala Unicode in online content.
- Sinhala SP for Windows developed by Native Innovation (Pvt) Ltd is a more complete software solution to its predecessor Sinhala Text Box. Its developer (Dasith Wijesiriwardena) introduces a new IME (Input Method Editor) technology by the name of “FutureSinhala” which acts as a bridge between the proprietary fonts/keyboards and the new Unicode/SLS1134 standard. It fully supports working with and converting Thibus, Helawadana and Kaputa font based documents to SLS1134. It ships with a transliteration scheme that works at the Windows OS level (called "Singlish") which has advanced support for Sinhala-English and Tamil-English using a QWERTY keyboard. [21]
- Kaputa Uniwriter is a real time Sinhala Unicode Input System and a trainer introduced by http://www.kaputa.com. [22]
- "Shilpa Sayura" The first Sinhala Unicode e-Learning system with content for national education developed by Niranjan Meegammana with a grant form Information and communication Technology Agency to e fusion pvt ltd. Inspires rural telecentres to use Sinhala Unicode in education development. This project received several international awards for innovation of local language for rural education development. Shilpa Sayura used a java script based online Sinhala Input Method supporting Kaputa and Wijeysekara Keyboards. [23]
2006
== Machine Translation ==
In 2006, Rohan Manamudali and Sampath Godamunne, the original developers of the Thibus software suite, launched Sri Lanka’s first Sinhala–Tamil language translation initiative. [24] [25] [26] The system, known as the Thibus Translator, was developed to automatically convert textual content between Sinhala and Tamil—two constitutionally recognized national languages in Sri Lanka.
The initiative aimed to improve communication and accessibility across communities, and was one of the earliest efforts in rule-based machine translation for Sri Lankan languages. Though limited in scope compared to later AI-driven tools, it demonstrated the feasibility of interlanguage translation using structured lexicons, grammar parsing, and word substitution techniques. [27]
This project followed the team’s previous achievements, including the Thibus Trilingual Word Processor (1989) and the Thibus Dictionary (2000), marking another significant step in local language computing and NLP (Natural Language Processing) development in Sri Lanka.
2007-2009
- Sinhala Input Method Editor developed by SoftDevex (Pvt) Ltd that uses an exciting new input method for typing Sinhalese characters using conventional keyboard.
- In order to provide the instructions on installation of Sinhala Unicode and provide the required software to the users, ICTA with the support of University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) established www.fonts.lk. The servers and software for the site was provided free of charge by UCSC. ICTA developed 3 more websites in 2007 in order to extend the support provided by www.fonts.lk in local languages. While www.emadumilihal.lk provides information and software for using Tamil Unicode, http://www.locallanguages.lk provides information and software for using both Sinhala and Tamil Unicode.
- Online edition of Madura English-Sinhala Dictionary website http://www.maduraonline.com launched. This is the first online English-Sinhala dictionary and language translator in Sri Lanka.
- Realtime Singlish (Another transliteration IME) was first released on April 13 of 2009 by Madura A., latest version is 2.0 (at time of editing). The first Sinhala Unicode which has a correct starting "TNW_Uni" has been developed by Thambaru Wijesekara.