History

With the introduction of microcomputers in the early eighties, Sri Lanka too
embarked on the use of computers with local language input and output. The
University of Colombo developed a Sinhala screen output for television displays
and went on to provide election result displays in the three languages Sinhala,
Tamil and English within a few years. However, the requirement for a standard
code was identified and steps were taken by the Computer and Information
Technology Council of Sri Lanka (CINTEC) to establish a committee for the use
of Sinhala & Tamil in Computer Technology in 1985, soon after its inception.
This committee quite correctly took steps to meet the immediate need to agree on an acceptable Sinhala alphabet and an alphabetical order. Thus this committee joined with a committee appointed by the Natural Resources, Energy and Science Authority of Sri Lanka (NARESA) to form the Committee on Adaptation of National Languages in IT (CANLIT), which agreed on a unique Sinhala alphabet and alphabetical order. As for Tamil, no immediate action was taken due to the work being undertaken in India. CANLIT consisted of experts in the Sinhala language as well as IT.
It is of historic importance that a major set back for the development of Sinhala
language computing was averted when an injunction on the development of
Sinhala word processors taken by one developer against another based on a
disputable patent was settled out of court after years of litigation.