Re: [Indic-computing-users] unified approach (was:Incorporating Indic Computing)

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

Hi list,
> > we have one person (Karunakar) working full-time on localization.
> 
> Just a correction to this (this list is not exhaustive) 
I think the op was not referring to the indic computing project when he said
that there was just one person working on localization - but the project to
which he was associated.
And this highlights the very important aspect of any kind of volunteer work on
indic computing - they are all one man shows. More than a few people have 
observed that Indians are not good at team work but are good performers as
individiuals. I really don't think it would be any different for indic
computing - all we can do this is hope that the individual efforts pay off.

That said, it is indeed improper to put organisations and people before the
technological issues. We ought to be dissecting the technical aspects of any
solution and mention their pros and cons regardless of which organisation or
which person did it. 

At the same time we should 
1. be appreciative of other peoples' efforts - they are spending their free
time on doing something they think is useful to others, otherwise they wouldn't
have been doing it in the first place.
2. always be polite and courteous in communicating with each other
3. appreciate the good work somebody has done before we start off to criticise,
and if we criticise, stick to technological aspects.

> 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

Who is the indic community? I think it is everybody who is on this list. If a
section of the list feels alienated, it's a shame; and it's because of one of
the three reasons mentioned above. At the same time rather than feeling
alienated, it would be a good thing to actually publicise your work and tell
everybody how it would be useful. Again, when somebody posts a message on what
they have done, responses like "$ORGANISATION/ $PERSON always goes for the
$APPROACH which is anyway going to lead to $PROBLEM" actually result in this
feeling of alienation. 

> 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.

As an example, this statement - is akin to taking tech issues personally(Hema,
please forgive me, this was a readymade example - nothing personal against your
approach). The population "being targeted" may be not be rural users to someone
who's "excited about unicode". And it is best to discuss this on the standards
list, and also to add the pros and cons in the handbook. As I understand it,
anybody can contribute to the handbook. Correct me if I am wrong, koshy.

> 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.
> 

These are very good examples of user behavior, and they should be discussed on
the standards list. Again, the technological issues, not political ones.

> 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.

I couldn't agree with you more. This coupled with a roadmap for new volunteers
will be very useful.

In brief: If we fight amongst ourselves, it's only going to confuse, discourage
and demotivate newcomers who are excited about this emerging field and have not
yet decided to really take the plunge. And we do need more volunteers - without
the volunteers there's no project here.

Let's stick to technology, and to solving people's problems by analysing user
needs and behavior, and to keeping it interesting for developers.
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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