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

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

Alok,

Great mail, and I agree with you 100%.  

This is about working together, not apart, towards a goal, not in
circles around it.  

As Koshy says, the Signal-to-Bandwidth ratio should be maintained... ;)

-- Tapan

On Sun, 19 Jan 2003 13:17:02 +0000 (GMT)
à¤_लà¥_à¤_ Alok <al...@ya...> wrote:

> 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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