Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Mahiti.ORG's indic language input requirements

[sunil <su...@in...>]

Questions and replies to Koshy, Harsha and Karunakar

On Koshy's <ko...@fr...> mail:-
I agree with your division of the project into   (1) a widget or framework that allows 
WYSIWYG creation of HTML pages including tables. (2) an input method that can handle 
indian languages

Thanks for http://www.bris.ac.uk/ISC/cms/ttw.html. Most the options seem to be 
Windoze only or MSIE only. Working by elimination I have the following projects to 
evaluate. I plan to evaluate by checking the Widget on MSIE and Mozilla [on Windoze and 
RH Linux]. After that I will post a short report to the mailing list.

My options are...
1. http://www.hexidec.com/ekit.php.
2. http://sourceforge.net/projects/htmltea/. Oops SP is down for the moment. I will check 
later.

All the five remotely hosted TTW WYSIWYG Editor Widgets [SuperUpdate, OmniEdit, 
WebsiteSimplicity, OmniUpdate, HookFryServe] seem to be Commercial and not GPL. So 
I guess we drop them for this project. Unless someone has a better idea on how we can 
use this.

B.T.W
http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/UNIXTOOLS/unix_editors.htm is giving 
me a 404. Please recheck the URL and send.

The Universal Canvas http://www.ektron.com/ is not worth it because according to
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=705/BYT20010608S0001/index3.htm
'The product, which wraps several layers of integration code around the core edit control, 
works with MSIE and (by way of a plugin) with Netscape, though for Windows only in 
both cases.'
...and...
'Ektron sells the editor bound to one or more URLs. For each URL, you can buy it two 
ways: $30/user (in $299 10-packs), and $6000/enterprise. '

On Harsha's <har...@ya...> mail:-
> Yes it is for opensource (will be up on IISc site
> soon). Since java is cross platform, this will work
> on linux/windows with java installed.

Can you send us the source files. Alternatively can you upload the source onto 
briefcase.yahoo.com.

> If the target audience access a specific system to
> which all required software can be suppiled or if
> you plan to distribute CDs, to each user, then this > is feasible.

We will have control over the clients. We can install JRE on the clients if required.

> If you wish to have a non Java Input Method
> Framework based Indic text component in an applet

This is not required as we have complete control of the clients for local langauge 
computing. Therefore a large download would ok.

> You can also have FontCode->UNICODE tranlation or
> vice-versa. but that better be at the backend and
> not at the client side.

I agree. Because UNICODE would double the traffic between the server and the client.

> And finally, why would any
> one want to have UNICODE->FontCode tranlation!!??

Forgive my ignorance [comes from being a newbie in Indic-Computing]. If I collect 
UNICODE data from my RDBMS and then want to display it on a web page - don't I 
have to convert UNICODE-> FontCode. Please educate me.

On Karunakar's <kar...@fr...>:-
>  Their work is mainly in foll.
>   ISCII plugin - view ISCII based web pages,
> using locally installed fonts , supports many popular fonts ,
> including CDAC ISFOC  & bharatbhasha's  shusha fonts.

Does this completely address 'display' of local language content for Mozilla/MSIE on 
Window and *nix.

> Anusaaraka -
> Machine transalation for indian languages. Right now only indlang to
> indlang supported, English  to hindi in development.  English -
> indian lang dictionaries in ISCII format.

Is this translation or transliteration? Sorry to ask a dumb question. What is time frame on 
this project.

>  Well very re-usable. Already I am converting the dictionaries to
> Unicode & also trying to do unicode (utf8) version
> of plugin.

Can you give us more details of what you are are doing. Also can to tell us why you are 
doing this? Are you converting the dictionaries for 'Anusaaraka'? We are newbie Java 
and Indic-computing people. Where to we start with the work done by IIT. You must 
know by now what our end goal is.

Thanks,

Sunil
 
Sunil Abraham
Team Leader - MAHITI
Info-tech for the Voluntary Sector
India Cares, Vijay Kiran
314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur
Bangalore - 560 071. Karnataka. India
Pager: +91 80 9624 279519 Ph/Fax: +91 80 5352003, 5350035
E-mail: su...@ma... Web: http://www.mahiti.org