[Indic-computing-users] Localization Newsletter Issue 3 Vol 1 (June 1, 2004)

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* Localization Newsletter Issue 3 Vol 1 (June 1, 2004) *
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Editor speak
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For the 'Team watch' section in this issue, we have the Punjabi
Localization team. It is the youngest team, a group of final year
college students, worked the fastest and completed Punjabi
translations for Gnome 2.6 in record time of one month.

This is our third issue and we already seem to be running out of news
items themed around Indic L10n. It could be either that localization
activities are going on very slowly or many not well known. We would
like to believe that the latter case is a representative picture of
the true state of things. Indic L10n has so many common issues that
need to be addressed and discussed. So if you know of any localization
activity esp. in free software/open source domain, You are welcome to
write to us at <feedback AT indlinux dot org> . Please do keep it
short and to the point, and links/URLs for further reference.

Any feedback/comments/suggestions on how to improve the newsletter can
be sent to <feedback AT indlinux dot org>.

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Headlines
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    * Utkarsh - Gujarati localized GNU/Linux was launched on 27th May
2004. Check out www.utkarsh.org for a sneak preview. Currently it
features Gnome 2.4 in Gujarati, with OpenOffice in Gujarati also
coming up soon.

    * Oriya group takes off - A group of active enthusiasts in
Bhubaneshwar and on Orissa-IT list are starting work on Oriya Linux
Localization. For current activities see
http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php/OriyaActivities . Also see
http://www.indlinux.org/oriya/

    * The Assamese GNU/Linux Localization Project has created a portal
at http://luit.sourceforge.net to facilitate interaction with the
community and other L10n groups 

    * The Native-Language Project for Bengali OpenOffice.org
(http://www.openoffice.org) is at http://bn.openoffice.org

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News Bits
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    * First build of OpenOffice.org in Kannada for Windows and Linux
is released at http://kannada.sourceforge.net . Kannada is only the
third Indian language after Hindi and Tamil to have OpenOffice
translations.

    * Rangoli (alpha) A multilingual Indic live CD is released. At
present it has KDE 3.2.1 with Bengali, Hindi and Tamil interfaces.
Rangoli is live CD project from IndLinux.org. This is an unofficial
release, a more functional beta release will be out by June end. CD
ISO image (470MB) can be downloaded from
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11495.

    * The Developer's Guide (Initial version) from the Ankur Bangla
Project http://www.bengalinux.org is at
http://www.bengalinux.org/devel_guide/

    * Red Hat India Pvt Ltd http://www.in.redhat.com held a meeting in
Mumbai on the 28th of May 2004 to initiate talks about issues related
to Indic L10n. A short blog entry from Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay can be
found at http://blogs.randomink.org/node/view/21

    * Another Phonetic keyboard layout - Devrom, Ravikant from Sarai
<ravikant AT sarai.net> informs us about availability of Devrom xkb
keyboard layout developed by Noah Levitt. Its available at
http://www.indlinux.org/downloads/devrom-xkb.tar.gz

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Team Watch
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The group of volunteers engaged in the Indic Localization effort in
the Punjabi language attained the unique distinction of being the
fastest to obtain GNOME 2.6 fully supported status. In an e-mail
interview with Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay (sankarshan at bengalinux dot
org), Amanpreet Singh Alam (amanlinux at netscape dot net) talks about
the Project and other things.

SM: Let's begin with the URL of the project

ASA: The project website is over here :
http://www.geocities.com/punlinux, but we are planning to change it
soon. The name 'PunLinux' is just a play on words derived from
IndLinux (Ed. PunLinux is now hosted on SourceForge -
http://punlinux.sourceforge.net/

SM: Why did this L10n start ? What was the motivation ?

ASA: At the initial stages, it formed a major project of the final
year of studies. However, we want to continue working with it for
another one year at least.

The motivation was perhaps the eternal 'personal itch of the
developer' and also the fact that we wanted a Punjabi GNU/Linux
Desktop.

SM: What are the vision & objective of the project ?

ASA: The primary objective is to ensure that GNU/Linux is made
available to the common populace in the local language instead of
English. This would also facilitate work at Government offices in the
local language ie Punjabi. We also want to ensure that Punjabi as a
language keeps up the changing paradigm imposed by Computer Science.

SM: What is the current status of the project ?

ASA: Gnome2.6 is fully supported, Package for Fedora 1.0 core is
created and works well (at least to our satisfaction). For Fedora core
2.0, we will initiate the translation. The status could be found over
here: http://elvis.redhat.com/cgi-bin/i18n-status

SM: Milestones & targets achieved ?

ASA: Our main target is to provide GNU/Linux is Punjabi. A LiveCD for
for demonstration purposes 'GNU/Linux Desktop in Punjabi',will be
created soon.

SM: Who volunteer for the project ? What is the desired profile ? Is
the project looking for more volunteers ?

ASA: Currently the team is comprised of five persons

- Amanpreet Singh Alam <amanlinux at netscape dot net>
- Gursharn Singh Khalsa <gursharnsinghkhalsa at yahoo dot com>
- Jaswinder Singh Phullewala <jaswinderlinux at netscape dot net>
- Narinderpal Singh <nps39 at rediffmail dot com>
- Sushil Kumar<badyalsk at rediffmail dot com>

My personal belief is that we could translate GNOME and Fedora on our
own and keep working at it for another 1 year without much problem.
But handling KDE, Mozilla etc would mean that we'd require to increase
the number of members so as to keep within a reasonable time schedule.

SM: What do you plan to do in future with this L10n ?

ASA: Like I mentioned earlier, we will support GNOME 2.6A and Fedora
for a minimum of 1 year. After that we will require a source of
revenue in order to continue to support and work for the project.
Myself and Jas work for the PunLinux Project.

SM: Are screen shots available ? URL pls

ASA: Project screenshots are available here:
http://www.geocities.com/punlinux 
(Ed. now its also hosted on http://punlinux.sourceforge.net )

SM: How is the funding being managed ?

ASA: Till now we have no financial support to work, but still we'll
work for minimum one year without any problem, after that we need to
review it.

SM: What are the problems faced by the L10n project ? (Both technical
and otherwise eg. Pango, OOo etc)

ASA: The locale definition pa_IN was required to be corrected, also we
did not at first have fonts

SM: Indic L10n suffer from common technical problems - are you in
touch with other groups that are doing L10n ?

ASA: Yes, we work with the major groups like IndLinux
(www.indlinux.org). We want to continue with our work with the support
of the people in terms of volunteers and resources.

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Help..F1
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* Have your say, Join Unicode Indic list.
Abhijit Dutta <dabhijit AT in dot ibm dot com> from IBM
http://www.ibm.com says we need more Indians on Indic Unicode
http://www.unicode.org list to discuss Indic issues with respect to
Unicode. To join the list send a mail to ecartis AT unicode.org, with
subject line as subscribe indic and a blank body. If you are a
language expert, linguist or involved in Indian language development
work its the right forum to get Indic Unicode issues resolved.

* The Assamese GNU/Linux L10n Project at http://luit.sourceforge.net
is on the lookout for volunteers. Do check the project homepage.

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This document can be copied, redistributed verbatim only (c)
IndLinux.org 2004.
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