[Indic-computing-devel] Mozilla Localization

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

Dear Indic Computing Group,

We are looking for people to help us localize Mozilla to Indian languages.
Rediff has agreed to hire people for this and their objective is to
encourage the
penetration of the Internet in India. The programmers will work closely with
the IndLinux.org team to localize Mozilla and the software thus developed
will
be released in the public domain. This would be a good opportunity for those
passionate about Indian language computing to work full-time in this area.
The individuals selected will work out of Rediff's Mumbai office.

More details are below. Those interested are requested to write to us at:
ve...@in... and kar...@in...

Regards,

Venky


Mozilla Indianization
==============

1) Goal: Enable Mozilla browser to display & handle indian languages
properly, with proper font technology available. Localize Mozilla interface
also to indian languages.

2) Project Requirements: All work done should be contributed back to Mozilla
codebase, so that it becomes part of it. Solutions arrived at should make
into main tree, rather than be done as adhoc hacks / addons / patches.

 i) i18n part (involving changing mozilla codebase) :
 a - Should be able to render Indian languages encoded in Unicode/UTF-8
b - Use a standardized font technology - eg OpenType.
 c - Support any encodings standardized for a language eg ISCII, TSCII,
KSCLP (KGP)

 ii) l10n part (no code change - UI customization, translations of UI and
Help text):
 a - Incorporate locale support (chrome level)
 b - Translate Mozilla UI into indian languages
 c - Making indianized mozilla theme - custom graphics, logos

3) Skill sets req
 a - Knowlegde of at least two Indian languages - reading & writing, script
& language processing level  2.i & 2.ii.b
 b - C, C++, XML, Java for 2.i
 c - Graphics expertise for 2.ii.c
 d - For translator - good vocabulary in English & at least one Indian
language, previous exp in translation also helpful.
 e - Proj. mgmt skills, ability to work with volunteers remotely, coordinate
work through email/IM/group meetings.
 f - Interest in localization and passion for having indian languages on
mozilla.
 g - Work experience of 2-3 years in the IT industry

Current status:
 Mozilla supports Unicode, so all indian languages represented in Unicode
work at unicode level - no proper rendering, if  a suitable unicode font is
available. ie proper vowel sign positioning, conjuncts etc are not
avialable. Some work is on by Prabhat Hegde from Sun Microsystems on adding
devanagari support, basically by using Pango (www.pango.org) rendering
engine. He is exploring doing it using Opentype fonts. (Any one working for
this should work with Prabhat for
guidance & review, as he already has experience in Mozilla codebase )

Some hindi translation work has been done by a group based in Mumbai,
available at http://www.bttlindia.com/mozilla/ . Some translation work for
Tamil is also on. (These translations should be reused, instead of starting
from scratch)

Notes:

2.i has to be done in active participation with Mozilla developers & done at
those forums ( mozilla-i18n , mozilla-l10n  )
2.ii.b is pure translation work, can be done in centralized or distributed
fashion.
 2.i.c - Since ISCII, TSCII etc are not registered character sets, it may
not be possible to use them with Mozilla autodetection feature. Some
workaround could be suggested. ISCII text will basically be converted to
Unicode internally for display, enabled through use of 'iso8829-12'
 reserved for Indic - ISO is waiting for us to settle to something :). (The
rationale to support ISCII is since ISCII chars will take 1byte, UTF-8 indic
characters take 3bytes, or  7 bytes when used as named
character references - The debate will pick up heat when indian languages
are fully supported )

-0-

Download Milan -- the Hindi interface to GNU/Linux from www.indlinux.org.