view tamil on text-console under linux

[M K Saravanan <mksarav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

hi all,

Warning:  Long Email.


Mr.sivaraj has written a wonderful tool to view tamil under linux console
(currently it is not working in X-term).  Even you can see tamil output in
tamil for "cal", "date" command.  you can use lynx, w3m browsers to view
tamil sites like www.aaraamthinai.com.  currently the consoleTamil-0.4
uses TSCII font for tamil encoding.  you can try it out:

http://www.egroups.com/files/tamilinix

you can click "apps" and download "consoleTamil-0.4.tar.gz" file and
install it.  Currently it has been tested under RH6.0.  It is also working
fine under RHL6.x.  Send your comments. one problem with TSCII font is it
is now showing the tamil character "i" (as in idli, idiyaappam) under
various browsers (except netscape).  Those who are interested in
developing tamil related tools on Unix/Linux you can join this mailing
list.  to subscribe to this list visit the above site itself.

I attended the recent tamilInaiyam-2000 conference held at singapore
during 22nd to 24th July 2000.  (to present a paper on OCR for printed
Tamil characters). For my surprise there is not even a single linux or
unix machine in the grand expo which mostly focused on learning tools for
Tamil.  It was amazing to see that several CDs are there to learn tamil,
famous stories with all th e multimedia in tamil, etc.., mostly targetted
to singapore, malaysian tamil childrens andstudents.  Nearly more than 30
papers were presented in the conf.  One of the session was completely
organised by children (6 to 12th std) mostly from sing/malaysia
schools.  They have developed reasonable amount of html content on various
topics in tamil as a part of their assignment in schools.  Also there was
a session focusing "spread of IT in singpore schools" chaired by one Mr. S
Kuppusamy who is a teacher in one of the sing. school.  All the time they
were talking about MS-powerpoint and windows only for all content
developing.  Then at the end of the session i opened my mouth and started
to tell the GNU project, Open source code, Linux etc.., stuff to the
crowd.  They simply asked what is meant by linux (??????).  Is it a
software like powerpoint or what?  what can i do with linux etc.., I gave
enough ref. sites to start with linux, and also talked a few words about
linux user groups all around the country particularly in chennai - the
activities going on there etc.., 

It is really a nice experience with sing. & malaysian tamil students.  
They have lot of enthusiasm to do something for their language.  Also
there is a great demand for OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software
for Tamil which can be used to build digital libraries quickly instead of
manual typing.  For the last 20 years here and there some theoretical
analysis and experimental work were done. So far no coordinated effort
have been put in this area.  OCR is a huge task that no single person can
finish the job.  If lot of volunteers can join as in Open Source Software
effort, and each concentrate on one specific task like noise removal,
syntax analyser, recognition engine, etc.., we can surely finish this job
in a year and can produce reasonable quality OCR software for printed
tamil characters.  At the conclusion session of the conference (headed by
Mr. Muthu nedumaran - author of the famous "Murasu Anjal software") , i
raised this issue, and almost all of the gathering supported to start a
open source code movement to develop tamil related tools and also to
maintain a single repository for such activities.  

One Mr.Vinod (IISc student) also attended that conf. and presented a paper
on "Tamil support in Linux Kernel".  Interested members can download
conf.papers from  http://www.tamilinaiyam2000.org/conference_hub.html
(some sections are missing in on-line version of papers from the original
one.)

I kindly request the interested ILUGC (Indian Linux User Group -
Chennai) members to join this activity. kindly spread this news in other
LUGs also.  sorry for the long email.

with love,
mks


-- 
********************************************************************
M K Saravanan, 
Member Research Staff,
The AU-KBC Centre for Internet & Telecom Technologies,
Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University,
Chromepet, Chennai 600 044.
Tamilnadu, INDIA

Tel     (O): 91 44 2417885         Email: mksarav@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Telefax (O): 91 44 2402711         URL  : http://mksarav.tripod.com
*******************************************************************



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