indic-computing-devel — Discussing the development of tools for Indian language information processing

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Testing OpenType support

[G K. <kar...@fr...>]

Arun M wrote:
>>>I've some selfish interest too ;) some fixes for Malayalam hasnt
>>>gone to 1.2 branch (available in CVS HEAD) because test has to be
>>>done to see how the changes affect other indic languages
>>>
>>
>> I am doing some testing for Telugu, using Pothana2000 font, on Gnome
> 
> 
> Is it a Free Font ? Can i get it ?
> 
  Free as in 'free beer' , available from 
http://www.kavya-nandanam.com/Pothana2k-95.exe

Regards,
Karunakar

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Testing OpenType support

[Arun M <ar...@fr...>]

> > I've some selfish interest too ;) some fixes for Malayalam hasnt
> > gone to 1.2 branch (available in CVS HEAD) because test has to be
> > done to see how the changes affect other indic languages
> > 
>  I am doing some testing for Telugu, using Pothana2000 font, on Gnome

Is it a Free Font ? Can i get it ?


regards,
arun

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Testing OpenType support

[Guntupalli K. <kar...@fr...>]

On 19 Feb 2003 21:41:03 +0530
Arun M <ar...@fr...> wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
>    I've been working with Eric Manders of ICU project to get
>    Malayalam
> work better. Except for Devnagari, Tamil and Malayalam not much work
> seems to be happening to test the code. 
> 
> In ICU same function is being used to handle 9 scripts. A fix in one
> language can break others. We can address this if a team form this
> list to do the testing for each indian languages. A bug free version
> of ICU will help FreeSoftware localisation as most of the many
> projects goes to ICU for OpenType support (OpenOffice, Mozilla,
> GTK).
> 
> I've some selfish interest too ;) some fixes for Malayalam hasnt
> gone to 1.2 branch (available in CVS HEAD) because test has to be
> done to see how the changes affect other indic languages
> 
 I am doing some testing for Telugu, using Pothana2000 font, on Gnome
2.2 release (pango 1.2.1)
 Conjuncts work properly, but not intermediate halant forms also
consonants not getting reduced to dead form when vowel sign is
attached to it (this is only for vowelsigns coming on top, like I II
AA etc).

Regards,
Karunakar

-- 
Hating people is like burning down your house to get rid of a rat -
Anon

---------------------------
* Indian Linux project    *
* http://www.indlinux.org *
---------------------------

[Indic-computing-devel] Testing OpenType support

[Arun M <ar...@fr...>]

Hi All,

   I've been working with Eric Manders of ICU project to get Malayalam
work better. Except for Devnagari, Tamil and Malayalam not much work
seems to be happening to test the code. 

In ICU same function is being used to handle 9 scripts. A fix in one
language can break others. We can address this if a team form this list
to do the testing for each indian languages. A bug free version of ICU
will help FreeSoftware localisation as most of the many projects goes to
ICU for OpenType support (OpenOffice, Mozilla, GTK).

I've some selfish interest too ;) some fixes for Malayalam hasnt gone to
1.2 branch (available in CVS HEAD) because test has to be done to see
how the changes affect other indic languages

Regards,
Arun.

PS: If any one wants to test Malayalam write to me, i've some changes
which is not yet in the pango/ICU cvs. 

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] [Indic-Computing-announce] First National OpenType Font Workshop

[Krishnamurthy N. <kn...@ya...>]

Hi all,

My comments on OpenType

* This being an extension of TrueType, M$ and Adobe   
   hold patents on the format. So, though the format
is    published, it's not open. It may be possible, in
that   case, to develop open source tools to
create/edit
  opentype font files (such as extending pfaedit), but
   then M$ and Adobe always have the last say and may 
    have hidden extensions that only their
  tools would be able to handle.
* The rendering algorithms right now are embedded in  
   commecial tools such as M$'s Inscribe. So, they may
    even patent the rendering algorithms thus
  blocking any open source rendering tools.
* Now about the great advantages of the GSUB, GPOS    
   tables - something fundamental is being missed out 
  by all developers here : display rendering is
closely   tied with (keyboard) input and since Indian
  languages are phonetic, the mapping of input to     
   appropriate choice of glyphs, their relative       

  Moreover, the contextual positioning of various     
   glyphs, especially the mathras and dependent vowel 
    signs (more so with 'split vowel signs') is very
much   dependent on the input context of relevant
letters.

  Subtle contexts such as when a 'm' should be mapped 
   to an anuswara can't be specified with these GSUB  
    table rules at all.

  Though the documentation of GSUB tables says "The   
   text-processing client uses the GSUB data to manage
    glyph substitution actions", it's quite a bit of  
     burden on 'each' of the applications to figure
out      what glyph substitution to use when!

  Of the six types of glyph substitution, the one that
   is touted as the most powerful, "contextual        
    substitution", works on the context of surronding 
     glyphs and not the input context! And that's not
what   one looks for.

  All in all, every app has to bother about looking up
   the GSUB and GPOS tables to figure out various     
    substitions. So, no common library that will
  do the job (like pango/gtk).  

By contrast, the generic transliteration rules
framework for Indian languages that I developed and
presented in the Sep 2002 Indic-computing workshop
intelligently ties together the input sequence &
context with display rendering, with very
sophisticated facilities for context specification
(both input and display), glyph reordering and so on.
The C library, which is independent of any of the
input languages/scripts, is available in sourceforge,
along with sample rule files for four of the Indian
languages
(Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada).

About this upcoming OTF workshop/seminar : it's not
free and not related to open source projects. So, why
is it being advertised on indic-computing list which
is for open source development ?  

cheers,
Nagarajan



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[Indic-computing-devel] [Indic-Computing] Text to speech software

[Vijay P. S. A. <vi...@ek...>]

Hi,

I came across a recent article (although not this one) about the work on 
"Vachak" by this company, a text to speech software launched by this 
company for Indian languages. There website is www.prologixsoft.com and 
are based in Lucknow. There contact email id is 
co...@pr.... The software is also supported on Linux. I 
have tested there online speech files (.wav files) and its really 
amazing. Might help the speech group people.

best

vijay

------------------
When your PC converses with you

By Royden D'Souza, Times News Network
The Times of India, New Delhi, India, December 7, 2002

Imagine villagers walking up to a PCO, dialling a number and having 
their e-mail read out to them in their language; visually challenged 
people surfing the Internet, and having web-page content read out to 
them in their mother-tongue; users phoning up a directory assistance, 
speaking in any of the 18 official Indian languages, or having your 
child taught daily by his/her favourite soft-toy.

Vaachak, a revolutionary text to speech software, created by Prologix 
Software Solutions Pvt Ltd of Lucknow, is the first ever software to 
translate Indian text in 18 Indian languages and even Romanised Hindi to 
clear, quality speech.

Vibhu Agarwal, president of Prologix, is obviously excited with 
Microsoft India expected to incorporate Vaachak in its latest version of 
Internet Explorer.

“The software’s synthesiser translates some 18 official Indian languages 
into clear electronic utterances in the desired Indian language, using 
the Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange (ISCII). What the 
user hears is clear and pleasant speech in a male or female voice."

"So, from having your e-mail read out to you through a sort of an e-Dak 
Seva, to having web-page content read out, to making your presentations 
more spiffy, Vaachak opens up an amazing world of options,” said Vibhu.

“Vaachak has a key role to play in e-governance, too, by enabling the 
transmission of important information and creating an administrative 
link with the inner-most reaches of a state, through the huge telephone 
network across India.” There are about 38 million telephone connections 
in the country, but only about 2 million Internet connections.

The government has so far sought to take the information revolution to 
rural India through IT Kiosks. However, this has been based on the 
premise that villagers are literate, know English, and have the time and 
money to access the Internet at such kiosks.

[Indic-computing-devel] [Indic-Computing-announce] First National OpenType Font Workshop

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

Indic-Computing Consortium announces
------------------------------------------------

PDF Announcement: http://www.ekgaon.com/~vijay/otf-workshop.pdf

First National OpenType Font Workshop

Date: (probable dates) 28th to 30th March 2003
Venue: PESIT, Bangalore

Sponsors:

PESIT, Bangalore
Vishwa Kannada, Bangalore
DeepRoot Linux Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore
Chattisgarh Infotech Promotion Society, Raipur
Indlinux.org, Mumbai
ekgaon technologies pvt. ltd, Madurai

Indic-Computing Consortium:

The Indic-Computing Consortium is an initiative of software developers,
businesses and academic institutions to help evolve appropriate
standards, resources and technologies for the Indic-Computing community.

The Indic-Computing Consortium is designed as a national-level
participatory organisation that serves as a common forum for discussion,
information exchange and advocacy on behalf of all parties interested in
the development of Indian Language Computing. The consortium aims to
make true access of computing possible for Indian people by enabling
support in local language.

A framework is being built for creation of a hierarchy of participatory
consortia, which would facilitate broad regional and local participation
in the standardization and development process from a variety of
stakeholders with differing areas of expertise and specialization. It is
aimed that these consortia be participatory and inclusive to properly
represent the viewpoint of local developers, users and other
stakeholders. In step two, Indic-Computing Consortium would encourage &
support formation of state-level consortia for each regional language,
which could include participants from the following key member groups:

- Developers: Software developers and managers developing local-language
tools
- Technologists: Academics and other experts in encoding and
representation issues
- Users / Practitioners: Government agencies, publishers, NGOs and other
major users of local-language software
- Linguistic Groups: Academics and other experts of the linguistic
features of a language and it's script

Working closely with the State Government, this state-level consortium
would serve as the representative body for deciding standards and other
technical decisions for computing in a given regional language. The
major roles to be carried out by the state-level consortium would be as
follows:

- Discuss various technical, linguistic and practical issues related to
computing in the regional language
- Serve as a capacity-building and educational resource for small
regional software developers and users
- Publish documents, tools & other materials helpful for local-language
computing and development
- Represent the regional language at National consortium meetings
- Represent the regional language at International Standardization
consortiums and proceedings such as Unicode and ISO

In September 2002 Indic-Computing organised its first National workshop,
which aimed at finding the various problems faced by the developer
communities and issues related to standardization, technical support,
policy and tools. To know more about the consortium, workshops and other
initiatives, visit us at
http://www.indic-computing.sourceforge.net

The workshop:

One of the working groups formed at the first Indic-Computing workshop
was for development of OTF & issues related to language standardization
and representation in international consortium. One of the action point
and agenda for the group was to “Hold OTF training workshop for
developing major Indian language OTF fonts”. Dr. U B Pavanaja took upon
to hold and coordinate this workshop and Mr. Abhas Abhinav proposed to
coordinate for logistics & sponsorship, Mr. G. Nagarjuna proposed to
help coordinate with Akruti for making available fonts to be used for
develop OTF. This group succeeded in its tasks making this workshop
possible, Akruti released some free fonts to be used for conversion to
OTF, which were taken up by some of the language groups (for more
details on the language groups and the major issues being dealt by it
please go through the proceedings of first workshop at our website)

Some of the major concerns raised by the language community were:

i. Developing good look fonts
ii. Development of open source tools for rendering and hinting of OTF
fonts (currently OTF development uses proprietary tools)
iii. Finding font developers for all Indian languages and coordinating
the group
iv. Making available fonts to be converted to OTF

This workshop seeks to address some of these issues and others enclosed
in the workshop program as under. This is the first national workshop on
the subject, we propose to take up more regional workshops in future to
give focused attention to each language, these workshops would be held
all across India in different parts and would hold training programs and
technology demonstration. We invite volunteers who would take upon to
hold these workshops and provide coordination & logistics support. The
Indic-Computing Consortium would provide necessary technical support and
capacity building to these regional groups.

Why OpenType?

OpenType is an extension to TrueType, and uses Unicode as standard for
character encoding. It also provides additional tables for defining rich
set of mappings between characters and glyphs. It also provides for a
having a large glyph set and even glyph variants. All the features
provided by OpenType format can be made use by having a application
independent, preferable system level library with a api interface usable
by applications.

For Indic script processing OpenType tables like GSUB (glyph
substitution) and GPOS (glyph positioning) gives font designer to define
his rules on what conjuncts or combinations could be made available.
Application programmer is relieved of the burden of knowing all the
linguistic part. Also OpenType sort of makes the concept of glyph
standard or font encoding standard redundant, again giving font vendors
freedom to follow their own glyph sets and not really affecting the
application. To summarize OpenType provides lot of benefits to Indic
computing and also renders redundant some issues faced in Indic
computing.

There has been an ongoing debate on whether OTF is right for Indian
Languages. The debate is relevant and contextual also. One of the
perspectives penned by G Karunakar in support of OpenType is here for
participants to explore. However the debate goes on and we invite all to
participate in it on the Indic-computing mailing list. Please go through
the attachment why_otf.txt for more on OTF fonts.

Who can participate & pre-requisites:

• Any developer/company/organization having interest in language
technology and interested to learn development of OTF, understanding of
Unicode and related issues.
• Prerequisites
• Understand how to make a font
• Knowledge of Unicode
• Have a font that it/he/she can use for lab time
• A willingness to keep trying until it/he/she understands
• To get comprehensive information on pre-requisites mentioned above
please go through the following links

• Creating and supporting OpenType fonts for Indic scripts
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/indicot/default.htm

• Building OTF
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/intro.htm

• Details about VOLT
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/volt/default.htm

• Unicode FAQ about Indic
http://www.unicode.org/faq/indic.html

• Unicode code charts
http://www.unicode.org/charts/

How to participate:

i. The workshop is by registration only, last date of registration in
20th March 2003
ii. Participants interested to participate in the workshop should send
there applications to Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya <vi...@ek...>
iii. Application format


• Name
• Organisation
• Communication Address
• Whether participating in individual capacity or representing your
organization
• In either case please write in 200 words your interests and what do
you expect from the workshop
• If there are more then one participant from your organization/group
please provide the numbers and communication address only.

iv. Please send the registration fee (*) (as applicable) by Demand Draft
in the name of “DeepRoot Linux Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore”

• Students - 500.00
• Active contributors to Indic-Computing Mailing lists (#) - 750.00
• Members of GLUGS & open source developers - 1000.00
• Academic & Government Institutions - 1500.00
(Representatives other then students)
• Corporate & other commercial software developers - 2000.00

(*) Participants please note that fee would cover workshop registration,
literature, CD with important font development softwares, lodging and
boarding for three days (also dinner for the night before the workshop
starts).

v. After acceptance, application request (printed) & Registration fee
should be sent to the following address:

DeepRoot Linux Pvt. Ltd.
#377, SFS-407, IVth Phase 64,
Yelahanka New Town
Bangalore – 560 064
Karnataka, India
Ph No. +91 80 856 2896
email: ki...@de...

vi. We have a very small support available for selected participants who
are not able to meet their travel & registration fee. All participants
who are not able to meet the expenses could apply for support from
Indic-Computing Consortium. Each application would be studied for
providing support. Typically we would support students, young developer
(not having financial support), members of GLUG’s and Volunteers;
corporate & other commercial software developers are discouraged to
apply for this support.
vii. Decisions on the applicable fee (#) & necessary support would be
taken by Indic-Computing Consortium and shall be notified to the
applicant.

Contacts:

Participants are advised to contact the following for there queries:

Dr. U B Pavanaja: <pav...@vi...>

Technical clarification, sessions of the workshops, required
preparation, fonts etc

Mr. Abhas Abinav: <ab...@de...>

Logistics, Lodging & Boarding, Venue, Registration fee etc

Mr. Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya: <vi...@ek...>

Workshop registration application, coordination, any other issue not
covered above

Instructions for Participants:

1) The participants are advised to go through the pre-requisites and
equip themselves with necessary knowledge on font & Unicode standard.
2) The staying arrangements are from the evening before the day of start
of the workshop. Dinner would be provided for the night also, for all
participants reaching before 9.00 PM only.
3) The lodging & boarding provided by PESIT is in hostels & mess, and is
modest by all means. Participants who wish to opt out of this
arrangement can make there own staying arrangements. Please notify the
same to us, also it is expected that the lunch would be taken by all the
participants irrespective of there place of stay at mess only as there
is not much time available in between the session.
4) The staying arrangement in the hostel is till 3rd day evening, it is
expected that the participants would vacate the rooms by evening.
5) PESIT is at outskirts of Bangalore, participants are expected to make
there own arrangements for local travel, as nothing could be provided by
the organizers.

Venue & how to reach:

PESIT (PES Institute of Technology)
100 Feet Ring Road,
Banashankri – IIIrd Stage, (Off. Mysore Road)
Bangalore
Phone: (080) 672 0007

For participants arriving at Airport, take a prepaid taxi to the above
address, the place is known to the prepaid stand.

Directions from Airport:

Airport Road--->Richmond Circle--->Lalbagh --->Hanumant
Nagar--->HoskarHalli--->PESIT 100 Feet Ring Road

For participants arriving at Railway station & Bus station, best is to
take a prepaid taxi to the above address, the place is known to the
prepaid stand. A Bus is also available

Directions from Railway Station:

Station--->Chamrajpate--->Ashram--->Hanumant
Nagar--->HoskarHalli--->PESIT 100 Feet Ring Road


Workshop program:

Day-1:

09:00 - 09:45 Registration
09:45 - 10:15 Welcome & Inauguration – J Koshy / Director PESIT
10:15 - 10:45 Overview - Pavanaja
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Planning glyph repertoire - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Introduction to Indian scripts, Character set, tools &
Glyph Design & current trends in fonts- Ravi Pande
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 - 15:00 Testing glyphs, Generating Fonts, Font format - Ravi Pande
15:00 - 15:15 Tea break
15:15 - 17.15 Lab: Define glyphs and fill out repertoire
17.15 - Tea & informal interaction

Day-2:

09:30 - 10:15 Encoding - J Koshy
10:15 - 10:45 Introduction to OTF - Pavanaja
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Open Type Tables - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Introduction to VOLT - Pavanaja
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 – 15.30 Lab: Open type tables

Day-3:

09:30 - 10:15 Testing - Pavanaja
10:15 - 10:45 Hinting – Video Presentation, from Microsoft training
programme
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Digitally signing the font - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Fonts on Linux - Karunakar
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 – 15.30 Lab: Open type tables

Special presentations proposed:

a. Sunil Abraham, Mahiti, Bangalore, would arrange for an IPR (cyber
laws) lawyer Lawrence Liang, who would discuss the issue of OTF openness
after understanding the Adobe & Microsoft agreement on release of the
fonts.
b. Development of Otf from Ttf (Akruti) experiences: Nagarjuna
c. Open/free software tools for Otf development: M Arun

best wishes

vijay

-- 

Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
ekgaon technologies
email: vi...@ek...
website: http://www.ekgaon.com

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Indic Support on Mozilla

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 09:23:48AM -0800, Prabhat Hegde wrote:
> 
> X support of Indic OT fonts is no longer a problem
> with a combination of FT2 + ICU. This is the approach
> we've used for Indic script support in OpenOffice.
> 

No doubt that FT2 + ICU is the right thing to do.  The key question is
where does the FT2 + ICU code live ? STSF folks are putting it in the
X server/library. Is OpenOffice linking it into the application ? 

	-Arun

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Indic Support on Mozilla

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

> 
> I am not sure that Uniscribe is widely supported on
> W98. Uniscribe is used to perform drawing and
> measurement of text and is needed on Windows to
> support Indic languages. It is possible that user
> needs to download a later version of IE which in-turn
> installs Uniscribe. (roundabout way)
> 

As discussed earlier on this list, I believe IE5 has Uniscribe
statically linked into the executable.

-- Tapan

[Indic-computing-devel] Indic Support on Mozilla

[Prabhat H. <sam...@ya...>]

replies inline.
--- आलोक Alok <al...@ya...> wrote:
> Hi List,
> > > available to help. Currently, i am looking at
> Indic OT
> > > support in Mozilla.
> > 
> > Works fine on my Windows XP box (except for
> keyboard input). I think
> > our energies are better spent in making X support
> OT fonts. XFreeST
> 

X support of Indic OT fonts is no longer a problem
with a combination of FT2 + ICU. This is the approach
we've used for Indic script support in OpenOffice.

> About the mozilla indic display on Windows xp:
> It would work fine only if you have the Indian
> langauge pack installed. Not
> otherwise.
> Currently the only two ways (that I know) to make
> mozilla display indic
> characters properly are:
> 1. on Winxp with the Indian langauge pack installed.
> 2. on linux with Indix installed.
> 

I am not sure how 2 works. But that may be because i
have'nt looked up Indix.

> This was about mozilla. Apart from mozilla, the
> other ways are:
> 1. IE 5 and above - win98 and upwards.
> 
> So, what this means in effect is, that IE5 will
> display indic properly on a non
> xp windows machine, but not mozilla.
> 

I am not sure that Uniscribe is widely supported on
W98. Uniscribe is used to perform drawing and
measurement of text and is needed on Windows to
support Indic languages. It is possible that user
needs to download a later version of IE which in-turn
installs Uniscribe. (roundabout way)

> Mozilla being a crossplatform browser, it would be a
> good thing if it has in
> built indic rendering support - that way we're
> enabling indic support for the
> browsers for win*, *nix and mac in one shot.
> 

Mozilla's rendering support resides in the gfx layer
which uses native toolkits (ie gtk or other, windows,
mac etc). So, I am not sure that having it in the XP
layer is possible or recommended. 

regards,
prabhat

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Re: [Indic-computing-devel] From IndLinux List

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 10:43:51AM +0000, à??à?²à¥?à?? Alok wrote:
> Mozilla being a crossplatform browser, it would be a good thing if it has in
> built indic rendering support - that way we're enabling indic support for the
> browsers for win*, *nix and mac in one shot.

Doesn't make sense to me. Mozilla uses the native graphics toolkit on each
platform (though a wrapper might be written around them). Why not apply
the same strategy to fonts ? Why reinvent the wheel ?

Win XP, Linux (IndiX, XFreeST) and Mac OS X, all have support for OT
fonts. Further, why do you want to bloat a browser that often gets
criticized for slow startup times and memory hogging ?

Building "Indic support" into most applications (not all) is a losing
game. What we need to do is build "Unicode support" in applications and
then add Indic support to the platform of interest (such as Linux, BSDs).

	-Arun

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] From IndLinux List

[<al...@ya...>]

Hi List,
> > available to help. Currently, i am looking at Indic OT
> > support in Mozilla.
> 
> Works fine on my Windows XP box (except for keyboard input). I think
> our energies are better spent in making X support OT fonts. XFreeST

About the mozilla indic display on Windows xp:
It would work fine only if you have the Indian langauge pack installed. Not
otherwise.
Currently the only two ways (that I know) to make mozilla display indic
characters properly are:
1. on Winxp with the Indian langauge pack installed.
2. on linux with Indix installed.

This was about mozilla. Apart from mozilla, the other ways are:
1. IE 5 and above - win98 and upwards.

So, what this means in effect is, that IE5 will display indic properly on a non
xp windows machine, but not mozilla.

Mozilla being a crossplatform browser, it would be a good thing if it has in
built indic rendering support - that way we're enabling indic support for the
browsers for win*, *nix and mac in one shot.

Just my Rs. 1.00 == 2c.
Alok



=====
Alok Kumar
F1, Wireless Monitoring Station Compound,
9th Main, 47th Cross, Jayanagar V Block
Bangalore 560076 India
+91-80-653-8200
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-hindi/
Can't see Hindi? http://geocities.com/alkuma/seehindi.html

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[Indic-computing-devel] Malayalam OpenType font

[Keyur S. <key...@ya...>]

Dear friends,

Development of Malayalam OpenType font is in progress. This font will be
available for free use and distribution under suitable licence. We have
designed outlines of this font and now we want your feedback. Please look
at the glyphset at

  http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/download/tmp/mal1.jpg
and
  http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/download/tmp/mal2.jpg

and give your feedback.

Please note that glyphs for ZWJ (U+200D), ZWNJ (U+200C), and Dotted Circle
(U+25CC) will be added in the font. Is there any other glyph which is
missing? Also please let us know treatment for special cases.

Looking forward to your valuable inputs.

Thanking you,
Keyur


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Re: [Indic-computing-devel] From IndLinux List

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 12:24:13PM -0800, Tapan S. Parikh wrote:
> available to help. Currently, i am looking at Indic OT
> support in Mozilla.

Works fine on my Windows XP box (except for keyboard input). I think
our energies are better spent in making X support OT fonts. XFreeST
(stsf.sf.net) recently added Indic support. Is the OO project doing
anything with STSF ?

> 
> Anyone interested, pl let me know.
> 
> Also, any freely available dictionaries? OO currently
> lacks dictionaries of any kind for Indic languages.

I have a ISCII coded Hindi-English dictionary published by:

Dr.Dipti Misra Sharma
Akshar Bharati Group
Language Technologies Research Centre
Indian Institute of Information Technology
Gacchibowli
Hyderabad - 500 019
Tel: 0(40) 300 1412 or
    PBX 0(40) 300 1967
    FAX: (910(40) 300 1413 
e-mail: di...@ii...

under GPL. Since then, I have re-encoded in UTF-8. And I find it to be a
very useful resource. What I have is: English Hindi Dictionary Version 2.0. 
Newer versions may have been published since then.

	-Arun

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] From IndLinux List

[Kaushik G. <kg...@wa...>]

Hi,
would a word list do ?

Dr. Avijit Das (ad...@us...) has a GPLd bangla wordlist originally
in ISCII format.
This is available at 
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/bengaliwriter/bwedit3_0.tgz?download
(its part of the bwedit package)
As Dr. Das points out, the word list hasn't been spell checked

A unicode (utf-8 encoded) version of the list is available at the
bengalinux site at

http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/dictionary/Files/dictionary.tgz

-kaushik


On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Tapan S. Parikh wrote:

> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 16:35:12 -0800 (PST)
> From: Prabhat Hegde <sam...@ya...>
> To: ind...@li...
> Subject: [Indlinux-group] Re: IndLinux-group digest, Vol 1 #82 - 1 msg
> 
> hi,
> OK - i'll start the browser FAQ. Should be ready in 2
> weeks. I am also looking for help/developers on
> browser I18n. If possible i'd like to get mozilla to
> support all the Indic encodings that pangox currently
> supports. Mozilla uses the same API as pango for its
> shapers and so it should be relatively
> straight-forward to port the existing pangox shapers
> to Mozilla-pango shapers. I will of-course be
> available to help. Currently, i am looking at Indic OT
> support in Mozilla.
> 
> Anyone interested, pl let me know.
> 
> Also, any freely available dictionaries? OO currently
> lacks dictionaries of any kind for Indic languages.
> 
> thanks,
> prabhat.
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.NET email is sponsored by:
> SourceForge Enterprise Edition + IBM + LinuxWorld = Something 2 See!
> http://www.vasoftware.com
> _______________________________________________
> Indic-computing-devel mailing list
> http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net/
> Ind...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/indic-computing-devel
> [Other Indic-Computing mailing lists available: -users, -standards, -announce]
> 

[Indic-computing-devel] From IndLinux List

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 16:35:12 -0800 (PST)
From: Prabhat Hegde <sam...@ya...>
To: ind...@li...
Subject: [Indlinux-group] Re: IndLinux-group digest, Vol 1 #82 - 1 msg

hi,
OK - i'll start the browser FAQ. Should be ready in 2
weeks. I am also looking for help/developers on
browser I18n. If possible i'd like to get mozilla to
support all the Indic encodings that pangox currently
supports. Mozilla uses the same API as pango for its
shapers and so it should be relatively
straight-forward to port the existing pangox shapers
to Mozilla-pango shapers. I will of-course be
available to help. Currently, i am looking at Indic OT
support in Mozilla.

Anyone interested, pl let me know.

Also, any freely available dictionaries? OO currently
lacks dictionaries of any kind for Indic languages.

thanks,
prabhat.

[Indic-computing-devel] Technology Map DB Design & Functionality

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

Hi All,

Please find below proposed functionality and DB Design for the
Technology Map.  Please try to go through it and suggest anything else
we would like to track.  

The types of functionality proposed for the site include:

Projects
--------
-- Add a Project Listing
-- Modify a Project Listing
-- Delete a Project Listing
-- Add a User Comment
-- Add a User Review
-- Add a Editorial Comment
-- Add a Editorial Review
-- Search for a Project According to Platform, Category, Type,
Localisation, etc.

Fonts
--------
-- Add a Font Listing
-- Modify a Font Listing
-- Delete a Font Listing
-- Add a User Comment
-- Add a User Review
-- Add a Editorial Comment
-- Add a Editorial Review
-- Search for a Font According to Type, Language, License, Quality, etc.

Users
-------
-- Register
-- Login
-- Forgot Password

Any more functionality required for the first cut of this?

Here is the DB Design:

Technology Map DB Design
--------------------------

Table: Project
==============
ID
Name: String
HomePage: String
ContactName: String
ContactEmail: String
ProjectStart: Date
LastUpdated: Date
License: {Proprietary | GPL | Shareware | NoLicense | PublicDomain |
Other}
CurrentVersion: String
ProjectType: {Application | API | OS | Distribution | Driver | Other}
ProjectCategory: ForeignID to Category Table
Platform: Foreign ID back to Project Table (Idea is that Linux, Win98,
etc. would all be entities in Project Table)
IndicInputSupport: { Full | Partial | None }
IndicPrintingSupport: { Full | Partial | None }
UnicodeSupport: { Full | Partial | None }
OTFSupport: { Full | Partial | None }
OtherEncodings: String
ShortDescription: Text
LongDescription: Text
Screenshot: (Optional)

Table: ProjectCategory
=======================
ID
Name: String
Parent: ForeignId to ProjectCategory Table (recursive for hierarchy)

Table: ProjectLocalisationMapping
===========================
Project: ForeignID to Project Table
Language: String
Status: { Full | Partial }
LocalisationContactName: String
LocalisationContactEmail: String
LinkToGlossary: String

Table: ProjectUserComment
=======================
ID
FontID: ForeignID to Font Table
UserID: ForeignID to Login Table
Name: String
DateSubmitted: Date
Comment: String

Table: ProjectUserReview
========================
ID
FontID: ForeignID to Font Table
UserID: ForeignID to Login Table
Name: String
DateSubmitted: Date
Comment: String
Usability: Integer
Localisation: Integer
Rendering: Integer
Printing: Integer

Table: Font
===============
ID
Name: String
CreatorName: String
CreatorEmail: String
OwnerName: String
OwnerEmail: String
License: {Proprietary | GPL | Shareware | NoLicense | PublicDomain |
Other}
DownloadLink: String
Current Version: String
Type: {OTF | TTF | Type1 | Macintosh | Other}
Encoding: {Unicode | ISCII | ISFOC | TSCII | Other}
Language(s): String
NumberGlyphs: Integer
Hinted: Boolean
Screenshot: (Optional)

Table: FontLanguageMapping
===================
Font: ForeignID to Font Table
Language: String

Table: FontUserComment
=======================
ID
FontID: ForeignID to Font Table
UserID: ForeignID to Login Table
Name: String
DateSubmitted: Date
Comment: String

Table: User
============
ID
Login: String
Password: Encoded String
FirstName: String
MiddleName: String
LastName: String 
EmailAddress: String
UserRating: integer
NumberOfReviews: integer
UserNotes: Text

Anything to add?

-- Tapan

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] The project faq - a suggestion.

[<a_j...@ya...>]

Dear Alok,

> information in http://dmoz.org
> would normally be more uptodate than that contained
> on the google pages, which
> are created using the (older) dumps provided by  

Thanks for the feedback.  Your suggested links
have been added to the FAQ and should appear
on the website at the time of the next build.



=====
Joseph Koshy            Tel: (080)-2251554 x1802 [Office (HPISO)]
The FreeBSD Project     http://people.freebsd.org/~jkoshy/
Indic Computing         http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net/

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[Indic-computing-devel] The project faq - a suggestion.

[<al...@ya...>]

Dear indices,
With reference to http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net/faq/miscellaneous.html
on the website - the url
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Globalization/ has a better
alternative, namely, http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Globalization/ . 

http://dmoz.org is the website of Netscape's open directory project(ODP) that
provides the data free of charge to search engines(to anybody who'd like to
download it in fact) also known as "downstream users" . The downstream users
are free to update any time they want, but the information in http://dmoz.org
would normally be more uptodate than that contained on the google pages, which
are created using the (older) dumps provided by odp.

Therefore I think it would be a good idea to provide the link to
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Globalization/ rather than to
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Globalization/ .

Also noteworthy are http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Fonts/Indic/ and
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Globalization/Character_Encoding/Indic/ .

Regards 
Alok


=====
Alok Kumar
F1, Wireless Monitoring Station Compound,
9th Main, 47th Cross, Jayanagar V Block
Bangalore 560076 India
+91-80-653-8200
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-hindi/
Can't see Hindi? http://geocities.com/alkuma/seehindi.html

________________________________________________________________________
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Re: [Indic-computing-devel] improper rendering of devanagari letter au औ

[<al...@ya...>]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-hindi/message/21
and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-hindi/message/20
were posted using the yahoogroups website form and yahoo webmail respectively,
using rh7.1 and mozilla 1.1. #20 renders perfectly, but #21 doesn't.
So it is a problem with the yahoogroups post form.

Has anybody detected such a problem for other Indic unicode characters while
using the yahoogroups post form? Maybe there is a pattern.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Alok

=====
Alok Kumar
F1, Wireless Monitoring Station Compound,
9th Main, 47th Cross, Jayanagar V Block
Bangalore 560076 India
+91-80-653-8200
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-hindi/
Can't see Hindi? http://geocities.com/alkuma/seehindi.html

________________________________________________________________________
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Re: [Indic-computing-devel] improper rendering of devanagari letter au औ

[<al...@ya...>]

 --- Keyur Shroff <key...@ya...> wrote: > Hi,
> 
> --- आलोक Alok <al...@ya...> wrote:
> > I'd like to draw your attention to 
> > 
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Hindi-Forum/message/784
> > 
> > The letter Ou -ie 0914 औ is not displayed properly here. This is not
> > the
> > first such occurrence, I have been able to simulate this many times.
> 
> It is shown like that because it has been encoded like that :-)
That's very enlightening! :)
> Seriously, the above character results in broken UTF-8 sequence and either
> your mail client or yahoo server somehow misinterprets it. You can confirm

OK, yahoo web mail displays it properly, because I can see it fine now. But if
I post a message using the form provided by http://groups.yahoo.com - on
viewing the message in the archive or in an email client, the letter is
garbled.

This implies that the program that accepts/processes the form on the
yahoogroups server is not able to interpret the code properly, and, this
program is different from the one that does the interpretation for yahoo mail.

I will be posting a bug report at yahoogoups, since the problem seems to be at
their end.
Thank you.

Regards
Alok



=====
Alok Kumar
F1, Wireless Monitoring Station Compound,
9th Main, 47th Cross, Jayanagar V Block
Bangalore 560076 India
+91-80-653-8200
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-hindi/
Can't see Hindi? http://geocities.com/alkuma/seehindi.html

________________________________________________________________________
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Re: [Indic-computing-devel] improper rendering of devanagari letter au औ

[Keyur S. <key...@ya...>]

Hi,

--- आलोक Alok <al...@ya...> wrote:
> I'd like to draw your attention to 
> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Hindi-Forum/message/784
> 
> The letter Ou -ie 0914 औ is not displayed properly here. This is not
> the
> first such occurrence, I have been able to simulate this many times.

It is shown like that because it has been encoded like that :-)
Seriously, the above character results in broken UTF-8 sequence and either
your mail client or yahoo server somehow misinterprets it. You can confirm
whether it is the problem with your mailer, by sending the mail to some
server other than yahoogroups, and read the message. If it shows the
character properly on some other server then it is most probably the
problem with yahoogroups  server.

For any browser to correctly interpret the UTF-8 sequence it is required
that you encode that information in your html page. You must set
"charset=UTF-8" in meta tag of you html page in the <head> section. For
example,

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

For more detail, see
http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/doc/HOWTO/Devanagari-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.2

Regards,
Keyur




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[Indic-computing-devel] improper rendering of devanagari letter au औ

[<al...@ya...>]

Developers, 
I've been experimenting with hi_IN.UTF-8 on egroups the past few weeks to test
usability. I'd like to draw your attention to 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Hindi-Forum/message/784

The letter Ou -ie 0914 औ is not displayed properly here. This is not the
first such occurrence, I have been able to simulate this many times.

Steps for simulation:
Post a messages using hi_IN.UTF-8 via any yahoogroup's website-post link, the
first letter in a word should be U0914. 
The 0914 औ letter gets "broken" into something else.
This has happened with IE as well as mozilla 1.1 on Windows 98 & XP
respectively. I am yet to simulate this on linux.

To simulate you could try posting a message on
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-hindi/ - this egroup also has
some messages in the archives that show the same erratic behavior.

Now, the bug is not browser specific, as I could simulate it on both IE and
mozilla. It could be windows clipboard specific, but other copy paste that
involves the same letter works fine on windows.

Therefore I suspect that it is because of the way the browsers/yahoogroups are
handling the strings. 

Does anybody have any off the cuff ideas about why this is happening? [What's
special about U0914?]

Also, is it a "known bug"? ie has someone faced this before?

If the information provided for simulation is inadequate, I apologise, please
ask for the specific information on this list or at al...@ya....

Many thanks.
Alok

=====
Alok Kumar
F1, Wireless Monitoring Station Compound,
9th Main, 47th Cross, Jayanagar V Block
Bangalore 560076 India
+91-80-653-8200
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-hindi/
Can't see Hindi? http://geocities.com/alkuma/seehindi.html

________________________________________________________________________
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       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com

[Indic-computing-devel] Re: [Indic-computing-users] ET... on official India mulling over GNU/Linux

[Keyur S. <key...@ya...>]

--- "Dr. U.B. Pavanaja" <pav...@vi...> wrote:
> 
> Is it official that NCST is CDAC's agency? Their working models
> are totally opposite. CDAC sells Indian Language solutions. NCST
> gives out free.

Yes, the decision has been taken and announced officially. Now NCST has
become part of CDAC. All major government's R&D agencies including CDAC,
NCST, and ER&DCI have been merged into one. Various meetings are being
taken place to decide about the new working model. I guess new model will
include both the strategies. Let us hope for the best :-)

Regards,
Keyur


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[Indic-computing-devel] mirroring the indic computing site - information wanted - correction

[<al...@ya...>]

>developers. Most employees don't have restricted internet access on their 
s/don't//


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