Re: [linux@it.com] Update - 19/Oct (fwd)

[M K Saravanan <mksarav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 22:23:20 +0530 (IST)
From: M K Saravanan <mksarav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Linux at IT.COM <linux-at-itcom@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [linux@xxxxxx] Update - 19/Oct

On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Atul Chitnis wrote:

> The Indian Linux section is still in the air. So far, not a single person
> has risen to my bait about there not being any such thing. (OK, I *did*
> get flamed from one LUG about it, but there is nothing on that LUG's
> website about it, either ;-).

1)  I can show the demo of "AkaramTeX - Tamil editor" on linux.  It is
written in TCl/TK.  It is a free software currently avl. on
http://tamil.htmlplanet.com.  The speciality of this editor it is bundled
(tar ball) with one LaTeX tamil font.  Because of this, you can type any
latex program in this editor (for changing between eng. and tam. press
F11) and compile as usual to get the *.ps output.

2) second thing is:  "consoleTamil-0.4".  In this, in text mode (not
X) you can view any tamil file (TSCII font).  currently you can see tamil
output with:

cal
ls
pico
vi
more
cat
lynx
w3m

with other utilities it has some problem. As such the consolefont used
will not be that much good.  You can download this software from:

http://www.egroups.com/tamilinix

I am attending the it.com on Nov.4th.  That day i can show the demo of
these stuff.  Currently it has been tested in RHL6.x  Hope in other distro
also it will work.  Work is going on to provide "inputting" support also.

3)  In our centre (AU-KBC Centre, MIT, Anna Univ.) we are currently
developing a Tamil to Hindi Human Aided Machine Translation System based
on Linux (perl).  It is still in the development stage but can translate
simple sentences.  Currently the dictionary size is very limited (contains
only 33,000 words from tamil to hindi).  The entire thing was developed
using CDAC GIST Terminal (It's a dumb terminal which supports all the
Indian Lang.).  But just last week we converted it into browser based one.  
A much more stable version called "Telugu to Hindi Anusaaraka" was
developed as Central UNiv., Hyderabad under the leadership of Prof.Rajeev
Sangal, Dr.Vineet Chaitanya, Ms.Amba Kulkarni.  Actually they are also
developed alpha versions of "Marathi to Hindi, Kannada to Hindi" also.  
The output will be reasonably better than ours in their systems. Since I
don't know telugu/marathi/kannada, sorry i can't demo these software.  
For more details on these software you can contact

sangal@xxxxxxxx  (or)
amba@xxxxxxxx  (or)
vc@xxxxxxxx

Currently they moved to Lang.Technology Research Centre, at
IIIT-Hyderabad.

4)  KDE 2.0 beta comes with Tamil support.  Those who want to take a look
of the screenshot kindly visit:  http://tamil.htmlplanet.com and also at
http://members.home.net/gomathiss/kde.html  for more details.  If any
tamil guys are in list can try to show this demo to the audience since i
have not tried KDE 2.0 so far.  For KDE tamil localisation Mr.Siva
Shanmugasundaram is the team leader (sshanmu@xxxxxxxxx)


5)  For manipulating all the Indian Lang. Prof.Kalyanakrishnan, in
IIT-Madras developed wonderful tools (since 1991) for all the platform
(unix, mac, dos, win).  Currently I dont know where it is avl. on the
web.  But he has very strict licensing scheme and don't want to make it
commercial.  Currently it is avl. free for non-commercial
purpose.  Basically he developed linguistic based approach to solve the
font coding issue.  He is using a 16 bit font developed by him, which
contains the code for phonetic pronounciation instead storing the code of
each letter in a lang.  This way it can easily handle all the Indian
lang. in a single appln.  for e.g. I saw the demo of his editor which can
simultaneously show all the Indian lang. (japanese too) and obey the
sorting order perfectly.  Prof. also showed us a demo of his Indian
Lang. Search Engine (based on his font) working fantastic (using mysql as
backend).  He dont want to give publicity due to various reasons.  Anyway
those want to make an attempt here is his email address:

rkk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Dr. R KalyanaKrishnan).

> Is there *nobody* here who has done any work on localising Linux for
> India?

I am in the process of writing a small linux tutor in tamil for
Intermediate level computer user.  Currently I have completed 3 exercises
which are freely avl. for download on:

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

(go to tutorial section)

also doing DOS-Win-to-Linux-HOWTO translation in Tamil will be posted this
weekend.

The problem with developing Indian Lang. based software is due to
non-standardisation of character/font encoding.  More about this, you can
expect on the tech talk - "Indian Lang Computing - Missing Resources"

thanks to all the people working for it.com for creating awareness about
Indian Lang. Computing to the audience.

-- 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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