Re: [LI] Linux in Hindi...

[Sudhakar Chandrasekharan <thaths@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Vivek Kumar proclaimed:
> I am new to this group so please excuse me if this is
> a repeat question. Could not find the archive of mails
> anywhere so am mailing it here

Read the footer. ;-)

http://lists.linux-india.org/

> Is some group working on porting linux/BSD to hindi. Just heard 
> the news that IIT-M was porting Linux into tamil (does someone 
> have there website).

The kernel need not be ported to any particular language (unless, of
course, you want the boot up bogomippage of your machine to be printed in
some local language ;-).  What needs to happen is the UI needs to be
localized to whatever language you are interested in.

1. GNOME/KDE:  Both of these are pretty decently internationalized.  In
most cases all you need to do is get the localized strings into the code /
resource.  I'd start here.

2. manpages: Many popular manpages have been localized into languages like
German, French and spanish.  AFAIK, no effort has happened in the Indian
languages front.

3. Command like utilities: Don't ever expect command like 'cat' to be ever
called 'billi' or something ridiculous on a Hindi system.  The command
names will never change.  Almost as unlikely is the output of these
commands changing.

> Well me and a couple of my friends have decided to port linux to 
> hindi. Initially we will be porting common applications like 
> text-editor, mailer, browser and some gui front end to the shell 
> in Hindi and then later attack the actual kernel. So it would be 
> great if there is some other group working for the same so we 
> could sync our efforts.

A good place to always start off is the standards.  Brush up on your
unicode.  AFAIK, the unicode consortium has defined a block of codes for
hindi.  The specifics of which code stands for which glyph is not
standardized.  Also, to get a complex glyph you'd have to overlay smaller
glyphs.

DON'T go with some propreitary way of encoding hindi.  This is a dead-end. 
And there are many incompatible encoding schemes out there.

One more thing that needs work on is a good trans-literation scheme.  A
scheme where an english keyboard could be used to type Hindi characters. 
The easiest to choose would probably be a syllablic phonetic scheme (You
get lower 'ba' by typing the letter 'b' and 'a' in succession.  You get
'bha' by typing 'b' and 'A' in succession etc..  This is how it is done in
Hirangana for Japanese.

> Also if there are any other internationalization projects
> going on could someone please forward that information
> also

See:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/
http://www.egroups.com/list/mozilla-indic/

> Work : 140 Scott Drive UMPK03-210, Menlo Park, CA -94063
>        mailto:vk@xxxxxxxxxxx  phone:650-2166054

So you are with Sun, are you?  Wait a minute!  Has McNealy's ego balooned
to such an extent that they have named a street after him? ;-)

Thaths
-- 
"Dear Mr. President. Nowadays there are too many states. Please
          eliminate three."  "Granpa" Abe Simpson
   http://people.netscape.com/thaths/ Lead Indentured Slave
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