<http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/23/features/lang.php> is an
article on saving the languages of Thailand, in part by creating
usable orthographies. It says: "Like some of Thailand's minority
languages, Chong had no written script. But with the help of the
villagers in 2000, researchers at Mahidol University formulated an
orthography based on a simplified version of standard Thai characters.
Using the newly developed script, members of the Chong tribe then
wrote instructional materials, trained their teachers, and for the
first time, were able to record their own history and culture for
posterity." Can this be encoded using the Thai characters already in
Unicode, or does it need new characters? Does anyone know more about
this?