[Indic-computing-users] Indic Developer Meet

[Guntupalli K. <kar...@in...>]

Hi all,
 Over the past few years we have had lot of localization activity,
with much of progress coming in over past two years. Two years ago,
except for few languages like - Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil
localization for other languages hadnt yet started, but over the last
one half years, new teams have come up with some progressing rapidly
(Gujarati,Punjabi) and others picking up pace
(Kannda,Marathi,Oriya,Telugu) , while few still need lot of work -
Malayalam, Assamese and Urdu. In Sept 2004 we had first Indic
Computing coordination meet, where all language and l10n teams met
face to face first time. While it helped understand and know from
each others work & it also enhanced communication between groups. The
focus of the meet was roadmap for localization.

 Over last 1year lot more activity has taken place with teams
progressing on different fronts of localization, different teams have
built up expertise in different aspects of localization, there is a
felt need that it would benefit if this expertise could be shared and
further built upon. This proposal is for a Indic localization
developers meet. Idea is for all experts to get together and do a
skill share & hacking session. Some pending areas needing work -
problems for which are common across languages could be worked on
together.

Possible areas of activity could be

    * Locale issues, glibc, CLDR
    * Rendering issues - Pango, ICU, Qt, Mozilla
    * OpenOffice localization - Translations, Making builds
    * Mozilla localization - localizing mozilla components
    * Mozilla printing - a much needed attentiona area
    * Spellchecker development - aspell/myspell based, 
    * Translation management tools
    * Input methods - IIIMF, SCIM
    * Testing framework - comprehensive framework to test Indic
stuff, and quality check and certification.

Some more topics could be suggested.

The mode of event could be more in workshop / hackfest kind, not like
presentations/talks. L10n team members can take up the topics above
in which they have expertise and take sessions. On some areas which
are not just skill sharing but need some group activity - we can have
groups formed which would look into the issues and propose solutions.
Activity could start ahead and culminate at the workshop.

Participants would be from Language/L10n teams, FOSS project teams
needing localization work, and interested volunteers who want to
participate in localization work actively. 

Probable timeframe - September/Early October
Duration - 4 days

Venue - yet to be discussed & finalized.

We would need host venue to provide for resources - a networked
computer lab, with some resources dedicated to running l10n products,
stable power and decent internet bandwidth, and some hostel style
accomodation for participants within or nearby the venue. 

Sponsorship would be needed top meet some expenses, the extent
defined by scale and resources needed.

There would be a online IRC meet coming Friday, 29th July 2005,
3pm-6pm to discuss the event - agenda, mode of event etc. l10n teams
requested to be make themselves available.

Karunakar
Coordinator,
IndLinux.org

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