[Indic-computing-users] www.banglalinux.org

[FN <fr...@by...>]

http://www.banglalinux.org promises 'Bangla Innovation through Open Source'.
It's mission statement is to 'provide guidelines and technology for
developing open source Bangla'. It puts its motivation thus: 

   "Almost all the widely available software today is written and
   documented in English, and uses English as the medium to interact with
   users. This has the advantage of a common language of communication
   between developers, maintainers and users from different countries. In
   a country like Bangladesh, an overwhelming majority of the population
   does not know English. Given this fact, availability of affordable
   native language software will play a crucial role in the process of
   taking the benefits of the "information revolution" to the
   marginalized sections of society and to achieve appropriate social use
   of information technology.
   
   "Bangla language support for Linux operating system can be done at two
   modes, namely the Console mode and the X-Windows mode, with mutual
   compatibility. The requirements on the RAM vary with the mode. In the
   console mode the RAM requirement is 4 MB while a minimal windows based
   system requires 6-8 MB. For the cheapest solution, with minimal
   configuration of resources, the console mode is preferred. But the
   comfort and ease of use on GUI based applications has prompted the
   X-Windows based solution, at the cost of slightly more resources. The
   native language effort of BIOS group focuses on providing both the
   console and X-Windows based local language interface for the Linux
   operating system. In either case, the primary goal is to enable
   applications to inherit the interface with no or minimal modification.
   Further, an application developed in the console-based environment
   must work without requiring any modification in the X environment.
   
   "Developing a native language interface at an operating system level is
   a better proposition compared to developing it at an application level
   as the former enables all the applications running on top of the
   operating system to inherit the interface. The choice of Linux as the
   operating system has been motivated
   by the fact that Linux is a robust and stable operating system and is
   freely available under the GNU general public license."


-- 
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|  ___| __ ___  __| | ___ _ __(_) ___| | __  Freelance Journo, Goa India
| |_ | '__/ _ \/ _` |/ _ \ '__| |/ __| |/ /  http://linuxinindia.pitas.com
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Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783
Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference