Summary of Support for Unicode Tibetan Script
Tibetan script is used for writing various languages of the Himalayan regions and the Tibetan Plateau including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Balti, Sherpa, etc. Classical Tibetan is also used as a liturgical language by the peoples of these regions and also by Mongol peoples of the Eurasian Steppe and Siberia. References to "Tibetan" in the following summary refer to the writing system of the Tibetan script, as encoded within the U+0Fxx block of the Unicode standard.
Support for Unicode Tibetan in Microsoft Windows and Microsoft SQL Server
Since 2003 it has been possible to configure Windows (2000 and XP) to use Unicode Tibetan at the application level: in documents, spreadsheets, databases, web pages, email, etc. Recent versions of Windows (Vista and 7) support a wide variety of OpenType Tibetan fonts, providing automatic support for Tibetan at both the application level and at the level of the operating system. Windows Vista / 7 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 support collation (alphabetical ordering) of Tibetan data.
Support for Unicode Tibetan in Apple Mac OS X
In December 2002, XenoType Technologies began selling its Unicode Tibetan Language Kit which enabled use of Unicode Tibetan in Apple Macintosh applications (with some limitations). Starting with Mac OS version 10.5 ("Leopard") in October 2007, Apple added built-in support for Unicode Tibetan consisting of two Tibetan fonts and three Tibetan keyboard layouts, along with system level support for proper rendering of Tibetan-script data. Mac OS version 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”) adds enhanced support for some OpenType Tibetan fonts.
Unicode Tibetan fonts
The Unicode (OpenType) Tibetan font “Microsoft Himalaya” is included with Microsoft Windows Vista / 7; the Unicode (AAT) Tibetan fonts “Kailasa” and “Kokonor” are included with Apple Mac OS 10.5 / 10.6. Additional Tibetan fonts can be easily added to either Windows or Mac computers.