indic-computing-users — Discussing the usage of indian language capable tools

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Incorporating Indic Computing

[Hema A M. <he...@la...>]

Please bear with me, this is a little long.

> For a long while, some of us (including myself, of course) have felt the
> need for an organization that can take the mission of Indian language
> computing forward. When Prakash Advani and I started IndLinux in 2000, we
> hoped that a lot of volunteers would step forward and help us localize
> Linux, but two years later we find that whatever we have done, it is because
> we have one person (Karunakar) working full-time on localization.

Just a correction to this (this list is not exhaustive) 

i) TeNeT Group, IIT Madras: a team of  5 people (ALL OF THEM 
ARE EMPLOYED ON A PROJECT) where the job is localisation of linux. 
(www.tenet.res.in)

ii) Prof.RKK (SDL, IIT Madras) and his team (please look at the website 
www.acharya.iitm.ac.in) has quite bit of localisation under
linux.

iii) AU-KBC has work going on in Tamil Linux

iv) IIT Kanpur has a project under TDIL for Linux with Hindi
(they also have modified X) (Prof.Rajat Moona)

v) NCST, Mumbai has also Indianised X.

In my opinion, there is a general DISMISSAL of all this work
by the Indic Community - primarily because they are not unicode
compliant (RKK's work) or are too general (TeNeT) in that they
support any kind of encoding.

I for one am not too excited about Unicode - primarily because
the population that we are targetting (the rural users) donot
really care about the support for ALL languages of the world.
I would rather use the entire 16bit (as in RKK's scheme) for
a compact representation of C^*V clusters.  

i) Perhaps our rural users may want support for 3 languages.  

ii) Further, there is already a lot of content on the web: there is
a lot of inertia in the field to shift to something new - an
example again:

a) B(h)amini is a Tamil font with a typewriter
like layout used in our kiosks at Madurai for inputting
data in Tamil.  Although we have provided a proper typewriter
layout with much better fonts, our operators are not willing to
shift - alternatively, we just changed the input layout to suit
their requirements.

b) Somebodyelse in Delhi uses Baraha font and refuses to shift
to somethingelse.

Comment: If we want all these people to shift we should be able support
unicode with ALL the existing fonts and not insist on Opentype.

Some of my thoughts:

a) I do think that multiple standands will continue to co-exist
(this is India with all its DIVERSITY :-)) and all that we CAN
do as part of the Indic Community is to understand and accept this.
We have to make sure that we have appropriate tools in place 
to perform conversions across different languages, different
fonts and different encoding schemes.  These could be filters
that a browser could use for:

i) searching
ii) downloading
iii) converting (today for example, we are quite comfortable
     when the browser supports multiple formats for saving
     web pages).

b) We HAVE to work with TDIL, MIT - irrespective of
how bureaucratic this organisation is - I personally do
think UNLESS THERE IS A POLITICAL WILL NOTHING ON A MASS
SCALE can be achieved. 

c) The Indic Computing group should also include speech
and handwriting interfaces (given the C^*V clusters in
Indian languages, these interfaces will be required).

d) The Indic Computing group should get itself into a position
where it advises the Govt./National Funding agencies about 
Open Source and its advantages for Indic Computing.  This requires
that we establish credibility - I feel we should host a 
COMMON website, where all the software available from the
community are categorised and posted.

Regards, Hema

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Incorporating Indic Computing

[Venky H. <ve...@vs...>]

I would like the inputs of the members of this list on the following
thoughts:

For a long while, some of us (including myself, of course) have felt the
need for an organization that can take the mission of Indian language
computing forward. When Prakash Advani and I started IndLinux in 2000, we
hoped that a lot of volunteers would step forward and help us localize
Linux, but two years later we find that whatever we have done, it is because
we have one person (Karunakar) working full-time on localization.

I would dearly love to see tons and tons of Indian language software out in
the market. I would dearly love to see my fellow Indians compute in Indian
languages with the same fleuncy that we, in the English-speaking world do.
But, my personal opinion (and correct me if I am wrong) is that this is not
going to happen through the volunteer-driven route. Maybe our approach to
attracting volunteers has been wrong and it would be good to know how this
can be set right. Setting up an organization to take Indian language
computing forward is a more expensive route all other options should be
explored before we go down this road.

Venky




> Maybe the incorporation thing(apart from the sf.net) should have been
discussed
> on the list a bit more? For example, why staffing?
> 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-users] (no subject)

[Samir K. <kon...@ya...>]

Good discussion.
It is true that there is no point in being a purist,
but I believe that what is usually called a popular
choice can be influenced!

It is a question of marketing too. Language might
be just a matter of communication, but there
are certain subtle things which a language conveys.
When these things perish due to the so-called popular
choices, part of you and your culture perishes
too.

Music is a good case in point. How often do you
hear the old Kishore Kumar tunes in public places?

Personally, when I hear them, it is a feeling of
getting in touch with myself; can an English
translation convey even an iota of the same?

regards,
Samir

--- ve...@vs... wrote:
> Dear Tapan,
> 
> Wonderful article. Thanks for sharing it with us.
> The other day, I was looking at a Canara Bank board
> and since they are required by the Government to be
> bi-lingual they had translated "Computer Centre" as
> "Sanghanak Kendra". I bet the employees use the term
> "Computer Centre" even when they speak in Hindi!
> Outside of the Government, I have never seen the
> term Sanghanak being used, which shows that even
> Government diktats cannot prevail over popular
> choice, especially in a democracy like ours.
> 
> Venky 
> =====
=== message truncated ===


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[Indic-computing-users] (no subject)

[<ve...@vs...>]

Dear Tapan,

Wonderful article. Thanks for sharing it with us. The other day, I was looking at a Canara Bank board and since they are required by the Government to be bi-lingual they had translated "Computer Centre" as "Sanghanak Kendra". I bet the employees use the term "Computer Centre" even when they speak in Hindi! Outside of the Government, I have never seen the term Sanghanak being used, which shows that even Government diktats cannot prevail over popular choice, especially in a democracy like ours.

Venky 
=====

ta...@ya... wrote

The story that the mouse was invented at PARC is a common mistake.  The
mouse was in fact invented by Douglas Englebart's group at SRI (formerly
Stanford Research Institute) in the mid 1960s and brought to PARC by
researchers from Englebart's group when they shifted to PARC sometime in
the 70s.  From there Steve Jobs took it for Apple.  

In fact mouse was only meant to be an interim term that somehow "stuck".
 I just saw a video about that the other day.

But it does bring up an interesting point about the intrinsic momentum
of terms and language, and how appropriate and/or useful it is to strive
against that.  Should we really fight against the introduction of
English technical terms into Hindi?  Arent these terms just making their
long way back from (in many cases) the original Sanskrit roots?  

For example, how many of you knew that jungle is actually a Hindi word
adopted into English (and not the other way around)?  Do we really care?
 Just like do we really care that the mouse was invented at SRI (and not
PARC and not Apple)?

In the end, if the more people can understand each other using these
terms, does it really matter how they got there?

I by far think the most troubling thing is the subtraction of language,
not this new kind of addition.  If by forgetting old terms and old
languages we are distancing ourselves from great literary traditions and
our accumulations of human knowledge, than that in my mind is a much
bigger problem than whether or not we come up with a new Hindi word for
mouse, remote control or the GUI.  But are the two trends linked? 
Dunno...

-- Tapan


On Thu, 16 Jan 2003 15:56:36 +0530
Ravikant <rav...@sa...> wrote:

> 
> Dear Indiccers,
> 
> I liked the following article, written by an expat computer engineer,
> for its refreshingly commonsensical approach to technospeak in a new
> language. I received it in my mail. Enjoy!
> 
> ravikant
> -----------------
> How a Language grows
> Agastya Kohli ( Aga...@ma...)
> 
> 
> I am no linguist. I have not studied the growth and development of a
>  language. I am not an expert in the field. But I use languages. I
>  grew up in an environment, where a language wasn't merely a subject
>  you took in school. When you studied a language, you studied it well.
>  So along with learning a couple of languages, I also learned the
>  nature of languages. How they interact with each other, how they
>  interact with the society, how they change over years, grow, develop,
>  flourish, or alternatively, shrink, loose their shine, diminish, and
>  eventually disappear. No, I didn't have a course in college on the
>  topic, but one makes observations, and takes notes.
> 
> 
> For example, I decided to study a little Spanish. Of course, the
> letter "j"
>  is used extensively in Spanish, but is pronounced almost like an "h".
>  'Jesus' is "hay-soos", and Juan is "hu-aan". So when my teacher told
>  me that the Spanish word for "a young man" is "haw-ven", it sounded
>  like another foreign word to me. But then she wrote it on the board -
>  Joven.
> 
> 
> When you grow up in India, speaking Hindi all your life, it doesn't
> take much to make a Yamuna-Jamuna connection, and all of a sudden,
> Joven looked a lot like "yauvan" - Sanskrit for youth. Sure, a young
> man was called "haw-ven". I don't remember much else from that Spanish
> class, but I do remember joven.
> 
> 
> It didn't take a class in linguistics to make the Yamuna-Jamuna
> connection,
>  or to make a Joven-Yauvan connection.  When you study a language, you
>  study the nature of languages simultaneously. Many languages, both
>  Indian and otherwise interchangeably use the sounds "ya" and "ja"
>  (letters I, Y and J),"ra" and "la", "ka" and "ga". I have a German
>  friend named Katja (pronounced Katya), and a Chinese friend who
>  spells the word "are" as "ay - al - ee". No wonder "badariya" is just
>  a derivative of "badaliya" in Hindi, and "bekaar" and "begaar" mean
>  the same thing.
> 
> 
> And in my opinion, that's how languages grow. Whatever is easier to
> say is what becomes the norm. The concept of "mukh-sukh"
> (mouth-comfort) makes a language add words as variants of themselves.
> 
> 
> Its not just with sounds - its also with word meanings. A language has
> a word for a concept. Something similar rolls around, and the same
> word expands its meaning.
> 
> 
> They had these things called coaches - pulled around by horses. People
> could sit in them and go places. A number of years later, the horses
> have now been replaced by internal combustion engines. So what do they
> call a car in Spanish? A "coche". In English, the word "car" really
> comes from "carriage" - which is something that gets carried. So a
> word has a meaning, a related concept attaches itself to it, and the
> word adapts to accommodate the related concept. That's how languages
> grow. Sure some people called them automobiles, but a car is still a
> car in English - one horsepower, or two hundred.
> 
> 
> Of course, my favorite - sticks of wood with cloth soaked in oil tied
> at one end. They would light the cloth on fire, hold the stick on the
> other end, and walk around with it in dark places. It worked as a
> source of light - they called it a "torch". Fast-forward a few hundred
> years, technology changes, now they have plastic tubes with batteries
> on one side and a bulb on the other. It's a source of light - and yes
> you're right - they called it a"torch". Of course, in America, they
> call them "flash lights". A different society saw a product, was
> inspired by a different way of looking at it, and added another word
> to the language.
> 
> 
> They tell me, that a language that doesn't grow - that doesn't change
> with time will eventually die. And I completely agree with them. But I
> am not sure I understand the definition of "grow" and "change with
> time". The way I see it, a language grows by innovation. When a people
> use a language, they come across something new that needs to be
> communicated; a word gets altered, adapted, changed, to communicate
> the new concept. We  - the community that works and plays with Hindi
> seems to work
>  differently. We don't want the language to innovate. We want the
>  language to borrow. A new concept comes along, usually with a word in
>  English, and without thinking twice about how Hindi would express the
>  same concept, we borrow the word. There are examples all over the
>  place.
> 
> 
> When Xerox first developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to use on
> a computer, they also developed a pointing device. It was an
> instrument connected to the computer that controlled an arrow like
> cursor on the screen. You moved the device, it moved the arrow, and by
> clicking the buttons you could provide input to the computer. The
> device was an oblong shaped half sphere, about 4 inches long, with a
> cable that ran to the back of the computer. To some creative mind, it
> looked like a small mouse with a long tail, so they called it a mouse.
> In Spanish, they call it a "ratos" (think rat). In Hindi, we can
> easily call it a "moosa" (Sanskrit for mouse). But its so much easier
> to just call it a "mouse" even in Hindi. Do we not have a word for the
> concept? Why do we need to borrow a completely foreign word for
> something that we already have a word for?
> 
> 
> One afternoon, my two-year-old nephew was sitting in front of a
> computer, looking at the cursor - a solid block on the screen -
> blinking. On, off. On, off. He pointed at it, and said "titlee"
> (butterfly). And I thought to myself, if a cursor looks like a
> butterfly to a two year old, that is what we should call it in Hindi.
> Titlee. After all, why is a mouse acceptable, but not a much prettier
> butterfly.
> 
> 
> I've always referred to my TV's remote control as "bandook" (gun).
> Sure, its not exactly the same thing - but its an expansion of a
> concept. If you can"aim-and-shoot" with a camera and a gun, how
> different is a remote control really?
> 
> 
> Lets stick with computers and technology for a little while longer.
> Why is a window (as in Microsoft Windows) not called a "patt" in
> Hindi? Most of the time that's what it is - an information board, a
> "pop up screen". Why do we seem to use "website" as a word in Hindi?
> To me, it's a "parav/padav"(stopping point). Why is an Internet portal
> called a portal? Because it's a launching point from where a surfer
> can go in many different directions. May be we should call it a
> "chauraahaa" in Hindi.
> 
> 
> Lets go outside the world of hi-tech. Hindi newspapers always talk
> about
>  which party has how many "seats" in the parliament. How come we don't
>  use the word "baithak" for it? Since when is "metro" a Hindi word for
>  a local train system in a city? It's not even a word in English!
> 
> 
> Doordarshan and Aakashvani of course have been abandoned as Hindi
> words for television and radio - they have simply become proper nouns
> - names of corporations, leaving us with nothing better than "Teevee"
> as a Hindi word.
> 
> 
> How come we call the burning cloth version of a torch a "mashaal", but
> we
>  call the battery-bulb version a "torch" in Hindi? We have a
>  "gaari/gaadi" - as a moving vehicle. But for some reason, a car is
>  just as much a Hindi word. Was this because Hindi needed to "change
>  with the times"? Or is this something else?
> 
> 
> Yes, a language must grow. If it doesn't, it perishes. But does a
> language grow because people who use it are creative and innovative
> with it? They think it, they speak it, they write it, and they use it?
> Or does it grow because they're too lazy to try to explain things to
> their readers in their own words, and find it much easier to simply
> borrow and replace?
> 
> 
> By simply borrowing words from another language, is Hindi growing? Or
> is it loosing its identity as the soul of over half of the population
> of the country, and becoming a language incapable of being the
> national communication channel of India? If most of the words in Hindi
> are not native, would it still remain and independent language? Would
> people read any literature written in it? Would there be any Nobel
> prizes for Hindi scholars? Or would they simply be ignored and
> described as a "mish-mash language that came about after the British
> invaded India"?
> 
> 
> They might call me a purist, who doesn't want to see the language
> modernize itself. But I'll let them know - I coined the Hindi word for
> a remote control. It doesn't get any more modern than wirelessly
> influencing an electrical appliance. And, I coined the Hindi word for
> a cursor - sure I needed help from a two year old kid to come up with
> that one - but he did better than most professional Hindi journalists
> out there.
> 
> 
> 
> About the Author
> 
> 
> Agastya Kohli, born Jan 31, 1975, and brought up in Delhi, moved to
> Chicago, IL for his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Illinois
> Institute of Technology, roughly ten years ago. After a stay of four
> years in Chicago, and completion of the degree program, he moved to
> Dallas, TX and worked as a Network and Unix System Administrator for a
> little under 2 years. He then moved again to the greater Seattle, WA
> metro area, and has been working in the wireless telecom industry for
> the last 4 years in various capacities.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Indic-computing-users] Fwd: article on technical neologisms

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

The story that the mouse was invented at PARC is a common mistake.  The
mouse was in fact invented by Douglas Englebart's group at SRI (formerly
Stanford Research Institute) in the mid 1960s and brought to PARC by
researchers from Englebart's group when they shifted to PARC sometime in
the 70s.  From there Steve Jobs took it for Apple.  

In fact mouse was only meant to be an interim term that somehow "stuck".
 I just saw a video about that the other day.

But it does bring up an interesting point about the intrinsic momentum
of terms and language, and how appropriate and/or useful it is to strive
against that.  Should we really fight against the introduction of
English technical terms into Hindi?  Arent these terms just making their
long way back from (in many cases) the original Sanskrit roots?  

For example, how many of you knew that jungle is actually a Hindi word
adopted into English (and not the other way around)?  Do we really care?
 Just like do we really care that the mouse was invented at SRI (and not
PARC and not Apple)?

In the end, if the more people can understand each other using these
terms, does it really matter how they got there?

I by far think the most troubling thing is the subtraction of language,
not this new kind of addition.  If by forgetting old terms and old
languages we are distancing ourselves from great literary traditions and
our accumulations of human knowledge, than that in my mind is a much
bigger problem than whether or not we come up with a new Hindi word for
mouse, remote control or the GUI.  But are the two trends linked? 
Dunno...

-- Tapan


On Thu, 16 Jan 2003 15:56:36 +0530
Ravikant <rav...@sa...> wrote:

> 
> Dear Indiccers,
> 
> I liked the following article, written by an expat computer engineer,
> for its refreshingly commonsensical approach to technospeak in a new
> language. I received it in my mail. Enjoy!
> 
> ravikant
> -----------------
> How a Language grows
> Agastya Kohli ( Aga...@ma...)
> 
> 
> I am no linguist. I have not studied the growth and development of a
>  language. I am not an expert in the field. But I use languages. I
>  grew up in an environment, where a language wasn't merely a subject
>  you took in school. When you studied a language, you studied it well.
>  So along with learning a couple of languages, I also learned the
>  nature of languages. How they interact with each other, how they
>  interact with the society, how they change over years, grow, develop,
>  flourish, or alternatively, shrink, loose their shine, diminish, and
>  eventually disappear. No, I didn't have a course in college on the
>  topic, but one makes observations, and takes notes.
> 
> 
> For example, I decided to study a little Spanish. Of course, the
> letter "j"
>  is used extensively in Spanish, but is pronounced almost like an "h".
>  'Jesus' is "hay-soos", and Juan is "hu-aan". So when my teacher told
>  me that the Spanish word for "a young man" is "haw-ven", it sounded
>  like another foreign word to me. But then she wrote it on the board -
>  Joven.
> 
> 
> When you grow up in India, speaking Hindi all your life, it doesn't
> take much to make a Yamuna-Jamuna connection, and all of a sudden,
> Joven looked a lot like "yauvan" - Sanskrit for youth. Sure, a young
> man was called "haw-ven". I don't remember much else from that Spanish
> class, but I do remember joven.
> 
> 
> It didn't take a class in linguistics to make the Yamuna-Jamuna
> connection,
>  or to make a Joven-Yauvan connection.  When you study a language, you
>  study the nature of languages simultaneously. Many languages, both
>  Indian and otherwise interchangeably use the sounds "ya" and "ja"
>  (letters I, Y and J),"ra" and "la", "ka" and "ga". I have a German
>  friend named Katja (pronounced Katya), and a Chinese friend who
>  spells the word "are" as "ay - al - ee". No wonder "badariya" is just
>  a derivative of "badaliya" in Hindi, and "bekaar" and "begaar" mean
>  the same thing.
> 
> 
> And in my opinion, that's how languages grow. Whatever is easier to
> say is what becomes the norm. The concept of "mukh-sukh"
> (mouth-comfort) makes a language add words as variants of themselves.
> 
> 
> Its not just with sounds - its also with word meanings. A language has
> a word for a concept. Something similar rolls around, and the same
> word expands its meaning.
> 
> 
> They had these things called coaches - pulled around by horses. People
> could sit in them and go places. A number of years later, the horses
> have now been replaced by internal combustion engines. So what do they
> call a car in Spanish? A "coche". In English, the word "car" really
> comes from "carriage" - which is something that gets carried. So a
> word has a meaning, a related concept attaches itself to it, and the
> word adapts to accommodate the related concept. That's how languages
> grow. Sure some people called them automobiles, but a car is still a
> car in English - one horsepower, or two hundred.
> 
> 
> Of course, my favorite - sticks of wood with cloth soaked in oil tied
> at one end. They would light the cloth on fire, hold the stick on the
> other end, and walk around with it in dark places. It worked as a
> source of light - they called it a "torch". Fast-forward a few hundred
> years, technology changes, now they have plastic tubes with batteries
> on one side and a bulb on the other. It's a source of light - and yes
> you're right - they called it a"torch". Of course, in America, they
> call them "flash lights". A different society saw a product, was
> inspired by a different way of looking at it, and added another word
> to the language.
> 
> 
> They tell me, that a language that doesn't grow - that doesn't change
> with time will eventually die. And I completely agree with them. But I
> am not sure I understand the definition of "grow" and "change with
> time". The way I see it, a language grows by innovation. When a people
> use a language, they come across something new that needs to be
> communicated; a word gets altered, adapted, changed, to communicate
> the new concept. We  - the community that works and plays with Hindi
> seems to work
>  differently. We don't want the language to innovate. We want the
>  language to borrow. A new concept comes along, usually with a word in
>  English, and without thinking twice about how Hindi would express the
>  same concept, we borrow the word. There are examples all over the
>  place.
> 
> 
> When Xerox first developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to use on
> a computer, they also developed a pointing device. It was an
> instrument connected to the computer that controlled an arrow like
> cursor on the screen. You moved the device, it moved the arrow, and by
> clicking the buttons you could provide input to the computer. The
> device was an oblong shaped half sphere, about 4 inches long, with a
> cable that ran to the back of the computer. To some creative mind, it
> looked like a small mouse with a long tail, so they called it a mouse.
> In Spanish, they call it a "ratos" (think rat). In Hindi, we can
> easily call it a "moosa" (Sanskrit for mouse). But its so much easier
> to just call it a "mouse" even in Hindi. Do we not have a word for the
> concept? Why do we need to borrow a completely foreign word for
> something that we already have a word for?
> 
> 
> One afternoon, my two-year-old nephew was sitting in front of a
> computer, looking at the cursor - a solid block on the screen -
> blinking. On, off. On, off. He pointed at it, and said "titlee"
> (butterfly). And I thought to myself, if a cursor looks like a
> butterfly to a two year old, that is what we should call it in Hindi.
> Titlee. After all, why is a mouse acceptable, but not a much prettier
> butterfly.
> 
> 
> I've always referred to my TV's remote control as "bandook" (gun).
> Sure, its not exactly the same thing - but its an expansion of a
> concept. If you can"aim-and-shoot" with a camera and a gun, how
> different is a remote control really?
> 
> 
> Lets stick with computers and technology for a little while longer.
> Why is a window (as in Microsoft Windows) not called a "patt" in
> Hindi? Most of the time that's what it is - an information board, a
> "pop up screen". Why do we seem to use "website" as a word in Hindi?
> To me, it's a "parav/padav"(stopping point). Why is an Internet portal
> called a portal? Because it's a launching point from where a surfer
> can go in many different directions. May be we should call it a
> "chauraahaa" in Hindi.
> 
> 
> Lets go outside the world of hi-tech. Hindi newspapers always talk
> about
>  which party has how many "seats" in the parliament. How come we don't
>  use the word "baithak" for it? Since when is "metro" a Hindi word for
>  a local train system in a city? It's not even a word in English!
> 
> 
> Doordarshan and Aakashvani of course have been abandoned as Hindi
> words for television and radio - they have simply become proper nouns
> - names of corporations, leaving us with nothing better than "Teevee"
> as a Hindi word.
> 
> 
> How come we call the burning cloth version of a torch a "mashaal", but
> we
>  call the battery-bulb version a "torch" in Hindi? We have a
>  "gaari/gaadi" - as a moving vehicle. But for some reason, a car is
>  just as much a Hindi word. Was this because Hindi needed to "change
>  with the times"? Or is this something else?
> 
> 
> Yes, a language must grow. If it doesn't, it perishes. But does a
> language grow because people who use it are creative and innovative
> with it? They think it, they speak it, they write it, and they use it?
> Or does it grow because they're too lazy to try to explain things to
> their readers in their own words, and find it much easier to simply
> borrow and replace?
> 
> 
> By simply borrowing words from another language, is Hindi growing? Or
> is it loosing its identity as the soul of over half of the population
> of the country, and becoming a language incapable of being the
> national communication channel of India? If most of the words in Hindi
> are not native, would it still remain and independent language? Would
> people read any literature written in it? Would there be any Nobel
> prizes for Hindi scholars? Or would they simply be ignored and
> described as a "mish-mash language that came about after the British
> invaded India"?
> 
> 
> They might call me a purist, who doesn't want to see the language
> modernize itself. But I'll let them know - I coined the Hindi word for
> a remote control. It doesn't get any more modern than wirelessly
> influencing an electrical appliance. And, I coined the Hindi word for
> a cursor - sure I needed help from a two year old kid to come up with
> that one - but he did better than most professional Hindi journalists
> out there.
> 
> 
> 
> About the Author
> 
> 
> Agastya Kohli, born Jan 31, 1975, and brought up in Delhi, moved to
> Chicago, IL for his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Illinois
> Institute of Technology, roughly ten years ago. After a stay of four
> years in Chicago, and completion of the degree program, he moved to
> Dallas, TX and worked as a Network and Unix System Administrator for a
> little under 2 years. He then moved again to the greater Seattle, WA
> metro area, and has been working in the wireless telecom industry for
> the last 4 years in various capacities.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.NET email is sponsored by: Thawte.com
> Understand how to protect your customers personal information by
> implementing SSL on your Apache Web Server. Click here to get our FREE
> Thawte Apache Guide:
> http://ads.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?thaw0029en
> _______________________________________________
> Indic-computing-users mailing list
> http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net/
> Ind...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/indic-computing-users
> [Other Indic-Computing mailing lists: -devel, -standards, -announce]

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Incorporating Indic Computing

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

Hi list,
> and intends to be for the near future:
> 
> (a) volunteer driven,
> (b) open-source,
> (c) focussed on indian language technology,
> (d) open to anyone in the world to participate,
> (e) hosted on SourceForge, and abiding by the 
>     rules laid down by SourceForge.Net for its
>     projects.
> 
Makes sense.

Maybe the incorporation thing(apart from the sf.net) should have been discussed
on the list a bit more? For example, why staffing?
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-users] Fwd: article on technical neologisms

[Ravikant <rav...@sa...>]

Dear Indiccers,

I liked the following article, written by an expat computer engineer, for=
 its
refreshingly commonsensical approach to technospeak in a new language. I
received it in my mail. Enjoy!

ravikant
-----------------
How a Language grows
Agastya Kohli ( Aga...@ma...)


I am no linguist. I have not studied the growth and development of a
 language. I am not an expert in the field. But I use languages. I grew u=
p in
 an environment, where a language wasn't merely a subject you took in sch=
ool.
 When you studied a language, you studied it well. So along with learning=
 a
 couple of languages, I also learned the nature of languages. How they
 interact with each other, how they interact with the society, how they
 change over years, grow, develop, flourish, or alternatively, shrink, lo=
ose
 their shine, diminish, and eventually disappear. No, I didn't have a cou=
rse
 in college on the topic, but one makes observations, and takes notes.


For example, I decided to study a little Spanish. Of course, the letter "=
j"
 is used extensively in Spanish, but is pronounced almost like an "h".
 'Jesus' is "hay-soos", and Juan is "hu-aan". So when my teacher told me =
that
 the Spanish word for "a young man" is "haw-ven", it sounded like another
 foreign word to me. But then she wrote it on the board - Joven.


When you grow up in India, speaking Hindi all your life, it doesn't take =
much
to make a Yamuna-Jamuna connection, and all of a sudden, Joven looked a l=
ot
like "yauvan" - Sanskrit for youth. Sure, a young man was called "haw-ven=
". I
don't remember much else from that Spanish class, but I do remember joven=
.


It didn't take a class in linguistics to make the Yamuna-Jamuna connectio=
n,
 or to make a Joven-Yauvan connection.  When you study a language, you st=
udy
 the nature of languages simultaneously. Many languages, both Indian and
 otherwise interchangeably use the sounds "ya" and "ja" (letters I, Y and=
 J),
 "ra" and "la", "ka" and "ga". I have a German friend named Katja (pronou=
nced
 Katya), and a Chinese friend who spells the word "are" as "ay - al - ee"=
. No
 wonder "badariya" is just a derivative of "badaliya" in Hindi, and "beka=
ar"
 and "begaar" mean the same thing.


And in my opinion, that's how languages grow. Whatever is easier to say i=
s
what becomes the norm. The concept of "mukh-sukh" (mouth-comfort) makes a
language add words as variants of themselves.


Its not just with sounds - its also with word meanings. A language has a =
word
for a concept. Something similar rolls around, and the same word expands =
its
meaning.


They had these things called coaches - pulled around by horses. People co=
uld
sit in them and go places. A number of years later, the horses have now b=
een
replaced by internal combustion engines. So what do they call a car in
Spanish? A "coche". In English, the word "car" really comes from "carriag=
e" -
which is something that gets carried. So a word has a meaning, a related
concept attaches itself to it, and the word adapts to accommodate the rel=
ated
concept. That's how languages grow. Sure some people called them automobi=
les,
but a car is still a car in English - one horsepower, or two hundred.


Of course, my favorite - sticks of wood with cloth soaked in oil tied at =
one
end. They would light the cloth on fire, hold the stick on the other end,=
 and
walk around with it in dark places. It worked as a source of light - they
called it a "torch". Fast-forward a few hundred years, technology changes=
,
now they have plastic tubes with batteries on one side and a bulb on the
other. It's a source of light - and yes you're right - they called it a
"torch". Of course, in America, they call them "flash lights". A differen=
t
society saw a product, was inspired by a different way of looking at it, =
and
added another word to the language.


They tell me, that a language that doesn't grow - that doesn't change wit=
h
time will eventually die. And I completely agree with them. But I am not =
sure
I understand the definition of "grow" and "change with time". The way I s=
ee
it, a language grows by innovation. When a people use a language, they co=
me
across something new that needs to be communicated; a word gets altered,
adapted, changed, to communicate the new concept.
We  - the community that works and plays with Hindi seems to work
 differently. We don't want the language to innovate. We want the languag=
e to
 borrow. A new concept comes along, usually with a word in English, and
 without thinking twice about how Hindi would express the same concept, w=
e
 borrow the word. There are examples all over the place.


When Xerox first developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to use on a
computer, they also developed a pointing device. It was an instrument
connected to the computer that controlled an arrow like cursor on the scr=
een.
You moved the device, it moved the arrow, and by clicking the buttons you
could provide input to the computer. The device was an oblong shaped half
sphere, about 4 inches long, with a cable that ran to the back of the
computer. To some creative mind, it looked like a small mouse with a long
tail, so they called it a mouse. In Spanish, they call it a "ratos" (thin=
k
rat). In Hindi, we can easily call it a "moosa" (Sanskrit for mouse). But=
 its
so much easier to just call it a "mouse" even in Hindi. Do we not have a =
word
for the concept? Why do we need to borrow a completely foreign word for
something that we already have a word for?


One afternoon, my two-year-old nephew was sitting in front of a computer,
looking at the cursor - a solid block on the screen - blinking. On, off. =
On,
off. He pointed at it, and said "titlee" (butterfly). And I thought to
myself, if a cursor looks like a butterfly to a two year old, that is wha=
t we
should call it in Hindi. Titlee. After all, why is a mouse acceptable, bu=
t
not a much prettier butterfly.


I've always referred to my TV's remote control as "bandook" (gun). Sure, =
its
not exactly the same thing - but its an expansion of a concept. If you ca=
n
"aim-and-shoot" with a camera and a gun, how different is a remote contro=
l
really?


Lets stick with computers and technology for a little while longer. Why i=
s a
window (as in Microsoft Windows) not called a "patt" in Hindi? Most of th=
e
time that's what it is - an information board, a "pop up screen". Why do =
we
seem to use "website" as a word in Hindi? To me, it's a "parav/padav"
(stopping point). Why is an Internet portal called a portal? Because it's=
 a
launching point from where a surfer can go in many different directions. =
May
be we should call it a "chauraahaa" in Hindi.


Lets go outside the world of hi-tech. Hindi newspapers always talk about
 which party has how many "seats" in the parliament. How come we don't us=
e
 the word "baithak" for it? Since when is "metro" a Hindi word for a loca=
l
 train system in a city? It's not even a word in English!


Doordarshan and Aakashvani of course have been abandoned as Hindi words f=
or
television and radio - they have simply become proper nouns - names of
corporations, leaving us with nothing better than "Teevee" as a Hindi wor=
d.


How come we call the burning cloth version of a torch a "mashaal", but we
 call the battery-bulb version a "torch" in Hindi? We have a "gaari/gaadi=
" -
 as a moving vehicle. But for some reason, a car is just as much a Hindi
 word. Was this because Hindi needed to "change with the times"? Or is th=
is
 something else?


Yes, a language must grow. If it doesn't, it perishes. But does a languag=
e
grow because people who use it are creative and innovative with it? They
think it, they speak it, they write it, and they use it? Or does it grow
because they're too lazy to try to explain things to their readers in the=
ir
own words, and find it much easier to simply borrow and replace?


By simply borrowing words from another language, is Hindi growing? Or is =
it
loosing its identity as the soul of over half of the population of the
country, and becoming a language incapable of being the national
communication channel of India? If most of the words in Hindi are not nat=
ive,
would it still remain and independent language? Would people read any
literature written in it? Would there be any Nobel prizes for Hindi schol=
ars?
Or would they simply be ignored and described as a "mish-mash language th=
at
came about after the British invaded India"?


They might call me a purist, who doesn't want to see the language moderni=
ze
itself. But I'll let them know - I coined the Hindi word for a remote
control. It doesn't get any more modern than wirelessly influencing an
electrical appliance. And, I coined the Hindi word for a cursor - sure I
needed help from a two year old kid to come up with that one - but he did
better than most professional Hindi journalists out there.



About the Author


Agastya Kohli, born Jan 31, 1975, and brought up in Delhi, moved to Chica=
go,
IL for his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Illinois Institute of
Technology, roughly ten years ago. After a stay of four years in Chicago,=
 and
completion of the degree program, he moved to Dallas, TX and worked as a
Network and Unix System Administrator for a little under 2 years. He then
moved again to the greater Seattle, WA metro area, and has been working i=
n
the wireless telecom industry for the last 4 years in various capacities.

-------------------------------------------------------

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Incorporating Indic Computing

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

> We have set off the process of registering Indic
> Computing as a non-profit
> organisation

Lest the quoted email be misconstrued, let me don 
my "project manager" hat for Indic-Computing and
state that this mail does not reflect the opinions 
of the developers of Indic-Computing on
SourceForge.Net.

I'm not saying that Venky is wrong (or right) 
in proposing such a forum; I'm clarifying that the
Indic-Computing project on SourceForge is today,
and intends to be for the near future:

(a) volunteer driven,
(b) open-source,
(c) focussed on indian language technology,
(d) open to anyone in the world to participate,
(e) hosted on SourceForge, and abiding by the 
    rules laid down by SourceForge.Net for its
    projects.

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

________________________________________________________________________
Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Indic Computing -- Appeal for Funds

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

Dear Venky,

As a volunteer of the Indic-computing 'open' project
I have some questions and comments regarding this
'incorporation of indic-computing' project.

1. First, this 'indic-computing' project which is    
hosted on sourceforge is a volunteer effort like 
50,000+ other projects on sourceforge. None of them
is incorporated or anything like that.

2. By definition, only committed, professional
developers and other resource experts are expected to
participate in such project, with common, shared
vision.

3. There are contributors from all over the world,
including those who are not of Indian origin and so
there is nothing specific to geographic affiliation.

4. All of us, who are committed to indic-computing,
(standards, development, use) should be motivated
enough to actively contribute whether we are staffed
in
an 'incorporated' indic-computing project or not.

So, to that extent, what I feel is that we should
first 
strongly encourage all the developers on the indic
list to actively submit their projects and make
progress (it's happening on various Linux-based
projects - a more concerted effort, I think, is
required at standards level and at systems  and
frameworks level (X display systems etc).

These are just my views. Thanks.

cheers,
Nagarajan







__________________________________________________
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[Indic-computing-users] Incorporating Indic Computing

[Venky H. <ve...@vs...>]

Dear Indiccers,

We have set off the process of registering Indic Computing as a non-profit
organisation and Prakash, Tapan, Vijay, Karunakar, Ashish, Pavanaja and
myself have chipped in Rs 2,000 each to jumpstart the organization. We
request others on this list to kindly come forward and help us with whatever
amount they can spare. The money will be used for incorporating,
registering, setting up and staffing Indic Computing. Our goal for 2003 is
to make Indic Computing into a powerful force that will being the benefits
of digital technology to millions and millions of our fellow Indians.

A more formal "Appeal for Funds" is also enclosed and we request you to
circulate this widely and persuade your friends and aquaintances to support
this effort. We look forward to your continued participation in this
revolutionary effort.

Venky


Indic Computing - Shaping India's Digital Destiny
==================================
A mere five-percent of India speaks English. However, almost all software
available in India is in the English language. To correct this imbalance and
give Indian languages their rightful place in the digital world, a group of
around 44 young technologists, linguists and activists came together in
Bangalore in September 2002 to participate in the first ever workshop on
Indic Computing. This workshop brought together the leading practitioners of
Indic Computing - individuals and organizations who are actively involved in
bringing the benefits of digital technology to their fellow Indians.

The participants of this workshop were united by a shared sense of urgency
and a passion for taking the benefits of digital technology to the masses.
Many of the practitioners were brought together by the belief that in a
world that was rapidly changing and becoming increasingly digital, India was
being left behind. Therefore, the creation of an environment that enables
Indians to compute with the same freedom and flexibility enjoyed by the
western world is a task of paramount national importance. The need for an
organization that can champion the cause of Indian language computing was
therefore, strongly felt at this workshop.

We are therefore incorporating Indic Computing as a non-profit organization.
Indic Computing will:

-- Offer practitioners a cross-platform and cross-language forum where
issues related to Indic Computing can be discussed.

-- Offer adequate representation, support, encouragement and guidance to
research groups, NGOs, and individual developers working in the area of
Indic Computing

-- Work on solving common issues and developing a reusable framework for
Indian language computing

-- Work with linguistic groups to create culturally appropriate translations
for common computing terms

-- Create a Handbook on Indic Computing that will have tutorial sections on
the basics of technologies relevant to Indian-language computing: on
character encodings, fonts, programming with locales, and the architecture
of the X Window System, in addition to the originally planned linguistic
information for developers. We hope this will help our developers produce
higher quality, architecturally correct code.

-- A Technology Map is being planned to serve as a guide to developers
interested in choosing from the large number of open-source Indian language
projects

We are seeking funds for incorporating, registering, setting up and staffing
Indic Computing and request well wishers to help us with financial
contributions. Join us in shaping India's Digital Destiny!

Send in your donations/requests for information etc to:

Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya,
C/o Prof. Anil K Gupta,
Wing - 13,
Indian Institute of Management
Vastrapur, Ahmedabad - 300015
Ph: 079-6324930.
E-mail: vi...@ek...

Or

Venkatesh (Venky) Hariharan,
B 203, Eden I, Central Avenue Road,
Hiranandani Gardens, Powai,
Mumbai, 400076.
E-mail: ve...@vs...

-0-

[Indic-computing-users] Sorry - here is the link to the mailing list of Unicode

[<kut...@ya...>]

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

________________________________________________________________________
Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com

[Indic-computing-users] Re: [Indic-computing-standards] Unicode 4.0 Alpha announced

[<kut...@ya...>]

Hello

I am forwarding a reply to the note sent by our
Ministry of C&IT to announce India's proposals for the
Unicode Code Charts. I urge all of us to track the
goings on in the Unicode mailing list (Subscribe at: )
and please ask the relevant experts to ensure that all
relevant info for Indian language behaviour, is
included in the Unicode spec for India.

Dr. Pavanaja - it is in all of our interest that the
requirements of our languages are clearly addressed 
by the spec - please use your experience and contacts
to drive this.

Invite your thoughts.

Regards
Abhijit





	Michael Everson <ev...@ev...>
	Sent by: uni...@un...
	01/08/2003 04:28 PM
		 
		 To: un...@un...
		 cc: 
		 Subject: Re: Unicode Standards for Indic Scripts
		
		       


At 06:43 +0000 2003-01-08, Manoj Jain wrote:
>Dear Friends,
>
>The existing Unicode Standards for Indic scripts have
some discrepancies.

What does that mean? What are "discrepancies"? Can you
summarize? I
will download the very large files, which will take
some time, but it
is best to use the discussion list to actually discuss
these matters.
Is there a problem? Or are there simply characters
missing?

>Government of India, Department of IT is working on
the proposal to
>be submitted to Unicode Consortium for adequate
representation of
>Indic scripts in the Unicode Standards.

The people involved in this department should work
directly with
those of us involved in this work who take an interest
in this
matter. In particular, it would be advantageous for
the Government of
India, which is a member of the Consortium, to engage
in active
discussion with the UTC. Don't assume that just
preparing a proposal
without that discussion will be enough. Often it
isn't.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  *
http://www.evertype.com



 --- "Dr. U.B. Pavanaja" <pav...@vi...>
wrote: > http://www.unicode.org/Public/4.0-Update/
> 
> Checkout your languages.
> 
> -Pavanaja
> 


________________________________________________________________________
Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com

[Indic-computing-users] Indic Computing -- Appeal for Funds

[<ve...@vs...>]

Dear Indiccers,

We are in the process of setting up Indic Computing as a non-profit organization and Prakash, Tapan, Dr. Pavanaja, Vijay, Ashish, Karunakar and I have donated Rs 2,000 each towards setting up the organization. We request other members to step forward and send us their contributions. The money received will be used for setting up Indic Computing, staffing the organization and furthering the cause of Indic Computing. We also request you to circulate this far and wide to all those interested in bringing the benefits of IT to the Indian masses. 

Regards,

Venky

Indic Computing - Shaping India's Digital Destiny
====================================
A mere five-percent of India speaks English. However, almost all software available in India is in the English language. To correct this imbalance and give Indian languages their rightful place in the digital world, a group of around 44 young technologists, linguists and activists came together in Bangalore in September 2002 to participate in the first ever workshop on Indic Computing. This workshop brought together the leading practitioners of Indic Computing - individuals and organizations who are actively involved in bringing the benefits of digital technology to their fellow Indians.

The participants of this workshop were united by a shared sense of urgency and a passion for taking the benefits of digital technology to the masses. Many of the practitioners were brought together by the belief that in a world that was rapidly changing and becoming increasingly digital, the creation of an environment that enables Indians to compute with the same freedom and flexibility enjoyed by the western world is a task of paramount national importance. The need for an organization that can champion the cause of Indian language computing was therefore, a need that was strongly felt at this workshop.

We are therefore incorporating Indic Computing as a non-profit organization. Indic Computing will:

-- Offer practitioners a cross-platform and cross-language forum where issues related to Indic Computing can be discussed.

-- Offer adequate representation, support, encouragement and guidance to research groups, NGOs, individuals, developers and others working in the area of Indic Computing

-- Work on solving common issues and developing a reusable framework for
Indian language computing

-- Work with linguistic groups to create culturally appropriate translations for common computing terms

-- Create a Handbook on Indic Computing that will have tutorial sections on
the basics of technologies relevant to Indian-language computing: on character encodings, fonts, programming with locales, and the architecture of the X Window System, in addition to the basic linguistic information appropriate for software developers. We hope this will help our developers produce higher quality, architecturally correct code.

-- A Technology Map is being planned to serve as a guide to developers interested in choosing from and evaluating the large number of Indian language software projects

We are seeking funds for incorporating, registering, setting up and staffing Indic Computing and request well wishers to help us with financial contributions. Join us in shaping India's Digital Destiny!

Contact: vi...@ek... or ve...@vs...

-0-

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Hindi fonts for GNU/Linux

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

On Sat, 11 Jan 2003 22:57:43 +0530 (IST)
Frederick Noronha <fr...@by...> wrote:

> PCQuest  last year  released some Hindi fonts for GNU/Linux. Does
> any one know of their suitability? Details below: 
> 
> Issue : February 2002
> 
> Type : Linux 
> 
>  Shusha and Shivaji fonts for
>  Linux. 
> 
  Provides font level support, encoding wise better than any other
unilingual font. I think in 8-bit fonts its the most popular one.

  It has a minimal glyph set ( ~100 ) fonts, just good enough to help
you write in Hindi, marathi, bengali, gujrati etc. Basic feature being
- phonetic ( graphical typing) approach, & that all req glyphs are
encoded in ascii range 32-127, which eliminates need for any keyboard
driver - in line with Mr Harsh Kumars vision that "one should not need
to invest in any extra hardware or software to work in his language".

  The encoding also has become sort of defacto for 8 bit schemes, many
fonts which came after Shusha have followed same approach. Regd
converting them to opentype - since glyph set is minimal, a lot of
work is needed to create all missing glyphs and there was also the
issue of whether they could be put under some specific license ( they
are at present in public domain ), which never became clear.

Regards,
Karunakar

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

---------------------------------------------------
* Indian Linux project, www.indlinux.org          *
* Indic-Computing project, indic-computing.sf.net *
---------------------------------------------------

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Hindi fonts for GNU/Linux

[Venky H. <ve...@vs...>]

These are the fonts released under BharatBhasha
(http://www.bharatbhasha.org.in) and perhaps Harsh Kumar, the author of the
fonts can reply

Venky


----- Original Message -----
From: Frederick Noronha <fr...@by...>
To: <Ind...@li...>
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 10:57 PM
Subject: [Indic-computing-users] Hindi fonts for GNU/Linux


> PCQuest  last year  released some Hindi fonts for GNU/Linux. Does any one
> know of their suitability? Details below:
>
> Issue : February 2002
>
> Type : Linux
>
>  Shusha and Shivaji fonts for
>  Linux.
>
> FN
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
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> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/indic-computing-users
> [Other Indic-Computing mailing lists: -devel, -standards, -announce]
>

[Indic-computing-users] Hindi fonts for GNU/Linux

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

PCQuest  last year  released some Hindi fonts for GNU/Linux. Does any one
know of their suitability? Details below: 

Issue : February 2002

Type : Linux 

 Shusha and Shivaji fonts for
 Linux. 

FN

[Indic-computing-users] Printing tools...

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

Here's something else from a more recent issue of PCQuest. Anyone tried it
out? FN

Issue : November 2002

Type : Linux 

 Indix is a projext to
 provide Indian language
 support on Linux. `oprint`
 is a tool which converts
 Indic text to PostScript
 using OpenType font. It
 supports UTF-8, ISCII,
 ucs2le, and ucs2be
 encodings. `netprint` is a
 tool which postprocesses
 Indic text in PostScript
 file created by either
 Netscape 6.x or Mozilla 1.x
 You require Linux 

[Indic-computing-users] Fw: IndLinux-group digest, Vol 1 #81 - 1 msg

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

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 12:01:04 -0800
From: ind...@li...
To: ind...@li...
Subject: IndLinux-group digest, Vol 1 #81 - 1 msg


Message: 1
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 15:17:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Prabhat Hegde <sam...@ya...>
To: ind...@li...
Subject: [Indlinux-group] Re: IndLinux-group digest, Vol 1 #77 - 7 msgs

hi guys,

Let me know if any how-to are needed for OpenOffice,
Mozilla or X-Window related topics. OpenOffice 643 is
Indic Language enabled and we are in final stages of
producing a hindi-localized build (with Translations
provided by NCST).

On similar lines, is there any project to standardize
translations/glossary. Such an effort may be needed
since Localized software in Indic languages is
relatively new.

prabhat.

[Indic-computing-users] Re: Updates on Malayalam project

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

Thanks to Arun M for this. FN

On 9 Jan 2003, Arun M wrote:


> 
> Hi, 
> 
>    
>   Just wanted to provide you with some updates on Malayalam project. 
> 
> Regards
> Arun.
> 
> 1. Font. 
> 
>    New version of the OTF fonts are under development and will be
> released by end of this month. Fonts are developed using free software
> alone. Some more features has been added to the font and new version
> works with Open Office developer release. OO seems to be having issue
> with split vowels which are found in Malayalam and Bengla. 
> 
> 
> 2. Translation 
> 
>   Translation efforts are going fast and recently a group has been
> formed with most organisations working in the localisation front to
> standardise vocabulary. 
> 
> 3. Documentation 
> 
>   Instead of translating documentation of each application it was
> suggested that better have a book in local language which will teach
> tools being provided. This can be used with projects like Akshaya in
> Kerala aiming at IT literacy. 
> 
> 4. OCR 
> 
>   A prototype OCR for Malayalam has completed. And development of
> standalone application in progress. First version is expected by end of
> the month. 
> 
> 
> 

[Indic-computing-users] CALL FOR PAPERS FOR TAMIL INTERNET 2003 CONFERENCE

[<ar...@bg...>]

For those interested in Tamil computing

N. Anbarasan

From : "K. Kalyanasundaram" <ka...@so...>
To : ti2...@ya..., gbi...@ya..., in...@ya..., aga...@ya..., tam...@ya...
Cc 
Subject : [ti2003_tpc] Call-for-Papers for Tamil Internet 2003 Conference
Date : Thu, 02 Jan 2003 17:11:02 +0100

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR TAMIL INTERNET 2003 CONFERENCE 

2 January 2003 - INFITT (International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil) is pleased to inform that the next International Conference on Information Processing and Resources on the Internet ("Tamil Internet 2003") - 6th in the series - will be held in Chennai,  Tamilnadu, India during the first week of August 2003. 

A Technical Programme Committe (TPC) has been formed, with Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram of Lausanne, Switzerland as the Chair and Prof. V. Krishnamoorthy of Chennai as Vice-chair to deal with paper submission and scheduling of the conference content (invited lectures and submitted papers). Further details on the conference content, exact dates, venue and other committees will be announced in due course. 

We take this opportunity to invite 'technical' papers for presentation at TI-2003 on all topics relating Tamil with Computers and/or Internet, on or before 30 APRIL 2003. "Tamil IT for Education" has been chosen as the theme for the TI2003 conference. 

To assist the TPC select papers for oral and poster presentations, please send us one or two A4 size outline/ summary of your presentation by the above date. Papers may be presented in English, Tamil or bilingual (Tamil-English) format. 

As with the earlier Conferences, all submissions must be in electronic form. For papers with content in Tamil or bilingual, please use either TAB or TSCII (version 1.7) encoding. Characters that are not part of the encoding used must be included as images (jpg/gif). The outline/summary of your presentation should also include your full name, designation, address and contact numbers. 

There will be a peer review of the submitted papers before acceptance. In view of our committed goal to raise the quality of the conference, a limited number of papers will be selected for oral presentation, possibly with a longer presentation time (30 mins or more). 

We would appreciate very much if you take note of the following deadlines and adhere to them. Authors whose papers have been selected for presentation at the conference will be informed by 31 May 2003. Electronic versions of the accepted papers should reach the TPC on or before 30 June 2003 for them to appear in the official conference proceedings (printed and electronic versions). 

The organisers of the conference assume that submission of a paper for possible presentation at TI2003 implies attendance at the conference and presentation in person by at least one author of the paper. This will be irrespective of whether the organisers can provide any financial support or not. As in the past, papers presented in the conference will be archived electronically for distribution through the INFITT website (in the form of pdf files) and INFITT will retain rights for this purpose. 

The following is a short list of topics (by no means exhaustive) to be covered at the Tamil Internet 2003 Conference: 

1.  Tamil IT for Education 

(Web/Online-assisted and Multimedia-based Learning and Teaching of Tamil at all levels) Learning environments, Learning/Teaching Technologies Teaching methodologies, Learner support, Courseware engineering, Courseware evaluation, Instruction design and delivery, On-line learner assessment, Collaborative learning, Games and Simulations in learning, Relevance of Video games in further learning, Evaluation techniques, Usability and learnability study, user-interface-engineering etc. 

2. Technology (Localisation/Tamil Enabling & Applications) 

-- Implementation in different platforms: Windows, Unix/Linux, MacOS, mobile platforms (PalmOS), 
-- Search engines, text converters, translators and APIs for collation, cross-platform data flow, ... 
-- OCR, voice recognition, speech synthesis, natural language processing, Computational linguistics, machine translation of Tamil texts to English and other Indic languages and vice versa, .. 
--    Online tools for Tamil IT such as online Spell  checker and e-dictionary using database and various scripting technologies like Perl and Java. 
-- Dedicated softwares based on Tamil Unicode for word-processing, databases, e-commerce, etc 
-- Tamil Domain Names (DNS) development/implementations 

3.   Open Source and Tamil IT 

   Open Source based products for Tamil IT with a focus to eradicate digital divide in regions with large Tamil population. 

4. Digital/E-Archives & Tamil Databases 

-- Digital collections of Tamil literary works, 
-- educational materials (e-books, CDs, cassettes/tapes,..) 
-- Online Tamil dictionaries, lexicon, thesaurus etc. 

5. E-Business and E-Governance 

-- Tamil portal sites, e-commerce, e-governance efforts etc. 

If you have any suggestions to improve the programming with additional topics, please forward them to the mailbox <ti2...@in...>.  We greatly look forward to your co-operation and active participation  at the forthcoming TI2003 conference. 

anbudan 
K. Kalyanasundaram 
Chair, Tech. Programme Committee for TI2003 
http:/www.infitt.org/ti2003/ 

PS:  Feel free to forward this announcement to other Tamil mailing 
lists you subscribe to and to interested individuals. 

[Indic-computing-users] Unicode 4.0 Alpha announced

[Dr. U.B. P. <pav...@vi...>]

http://www.unicode.org/Public/4.0-Update/

Checkout your languages.

-Pavanaja

----------------------------------------------------
-
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja
Editor, Vishva Kannada
World's first Internet magazine in Kannada
http://www.vishvakannada.com/

Note: I don't worry about pselling mixtakes

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Indix website down?

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

Hi,

The IndiX website is not down. There must be some problem at your end. A
link to Raghu font is there on the IndiX homepage:
  http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/
Download the font from there.

We have discovered some minor bugs in Raghu font. We are going to correct
the problems. In order to get latest version of the Raghu font, we
recommend the users to download the font from IndiX website only. However,
if you still want to distribute the font for non-commercial usage then you
should distribute the README also (available in the same directory with
Raghu font) along with the font.

Very high quality OpenType fonts for other Indian languages will be
available in coming months. We'll periodically release fonts as and when
they complete. All these fonts will released under suitable licence. But, I
can give assurance that these fonts will be available atleast for free use
without any modification in the outlines :-)

Regards,
Keyur



--- Alok <al...@ya...> wrote:
> Hi list(particularly the ncst folks!)
> A happy new year to you.
> A few of my colleagues are trying unsuccessfully to access
> http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/download - is the site down? If yes,
> when can
> we try again?
> I've observed that many people are trying to access this site just to
> obtain
> raghu.ttf , and if the url doesn't work, they just give up. So is it
> permissible to distribute the font thru electronic means, eg thru a
> corporate
> intranet? If yes, with what strings?
> There seems to be a single location where this font is available - no
> other
> locations where you can get it from in case this one is down.
> 
> Regards and best wishes for the coming year again.
> alok


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[Indic-computing-users] Indix website down?

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

Hi list(particularly the ncst folks!)
A happy new year to you.
A few of my colleagues are trying unsuccessfully to access
http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/download - is the site down? If yes, when can
we try again?
I've observed that many people are trying to access this site just to obtain
raghu.ttf , and if the url doesn't work, they just give up. So is it
permissible to distribute the font thru electronic means, eg thru a corporate
intranet? If yes, with what strings?
There seems to be a single location where this font is available - no other
locations where you can get it from in case this one is down.

Regards and best wishes for the coming year again.
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

________________________________________________________________________
Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Project -new programming langauge

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

--- Guntupalli Karunakar <kar...@fr...> wrote:
> > 
>  There is something in plan ( though not by Unicode )
> 
> http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/vedic/
> 
> Proposals to encode Vedic characters in the UCS

Mr. Michael Everson has been actively doing research on Indic
scripts(particularly Devanagari) since many years and he is one of the
active members of Unicode consortium. I know of such proposal submitted few
year ago. But the task is still pending since inclusion of new characters
in Unicode is a lengthy and complex process. It also needs approval from
government and scholars. For some unknown reason that work slowed down
after introduction of Indic scripts in Unicode. Also, any standard for a
language is an issue under the control of state government. The central
government's task is to co-ordinate activities. Unfortunately, some state
governments (particularly Tamil) in India are unhappy with the current
Unicode/ISCII model, and as a result the entire issue is becoming more
complex :-(

However, our central government is taking right steps in that direction by
once again starting initiatives to resolve pending issues. Let us hope for
the best.

Regards,
Keyur


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Re: [Indic-computing-users] Project -new programming langauge

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

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 21:05:01 -0800 (PST)
Keyur Shroff <key...@ya...> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> The Unicode coverage of Indian scripts clearly lacks phonetic signs
> that were used in ancient literature such as four Vedas (Rigveda,
> Saamveda, Atharvaveda, Yajurveda). Extended Latin range in Unicode
> covers some phonetic symbols in Latin script. Other phonetic symbols
> are encoded in IPA area which covers some of the International
> Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in Unicode [U+250 - U+2AF]. But again these
> symbols are based on Latin script. There is a need to include all
> symbols (like pitch, stress, time, etc.) needed for Indian phonetic
> alphabets because even visual appearance of these symbols are not
> there in Unicode as can be seen in ancient literature. Since it is
> clear that all these symbols cannot be included in current Unicode
> range for Indian script, separate space should be provided for it in
> Unicode.
> 
 There is something in plan ( though not by Unicode )

http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/vedic/

Proposals to encode Vedic characters in the UCS

    *
http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/vedic/devchars.pdf
    *
http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/vedic/jihvupadh.pdf
    *
http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/vedic/vedic-accents.pdf
    *
http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/vedic/Vedic_accents_doc.pdf
    *
http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/vedic/Vedic_visarga_like_chars.pdf

Does it resolve above said issues ?


Regards,
Karunakar


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

---------------------------------------------------
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* Indic-Computing project, indic-computing.sf.net *
---------------------------------------------------