[Fsf-friends] LINK: GNU/Linux in Indian languages ...

[Frederick Noronha]

[Note, please read GNU/Linux instead of Linux below... since this refers
to more than just the kernel. -FN]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

GNU/LINUX IN INDIAN LANGUAGES  * Call for participation

We are a group of people who passionately believe that the benefits of
information technology must be widely and freely available to the Indian
masses. Our group consists of people who combine skills in written scripts,
free/open source technologies, language experts and technology journalism to
make this happen.

Why Indian languages ?

Today, almost all software and operating systems and websites in India are
in the English language. Since English is a language spoken by less than 10
percent of India's population (generally considered to be the language of
the affluent) language is a significant barrier for the other 90 percent of
India.

This is creating a new class of people who live in what can be called as
"Information Poverty" even as technology becomes cheaper and cheaper. To
destroy this barrier we need to create a national-level, collaborative
effort to localise Linux to Indian languages.

Why Linux ?

The openness of Linux allows local linguistic groups to customise user
interfaces in ways that are far more culturally sensitive than any centrally
controlled approach. Linguistic groups that may be considered too small a
market by vendors can also take their destiny in their own hands by
customising the Linux interface to their own needs. We therefore believe
that Linux is a very attractive long-term solution to India's computing
needs.

We believe that information technology in India in general and Linux in
particular has been confined to the 3 % of the Indian population who feel
comfortable reading, speaking and writing English. Given that there are 1
billion Indian citizens, this is a scandal. Linux and its ecology encompass
almost all areas of computing today from small embedded devices and clusters
with thousands of nodes. We believe that Linux technology should be
accessible to all Indians, regardless of linguistic background.

How can I participate ?

Localising the user interface of Linux to all the 18 official Indian
languages will involve changing the menus and help-text to Indian languages
and creating a whole stack of applications and tools (word processors,
browsers, spell-checkers etc.) to enable computing in Indian languages.

To achieve this goal we are looking for people with either of the two skills
(if you have both these skills, that's fantastic!):

Technical skills: The project needs a variety of technical skills in variety
of programming languages (C/C++/Java/Perl) and platforms such as X-Windows
GNOME,KDE, font development, application development , locale support etc.

Language skills: You must be fluent with the script of at least one Indian
language and be willing to contribute to the task of Indianising the menus
and help text of Linux. We request linguistic user groups and patriotic
individuals to come forward and help us in this task.

Join in at  www.indlinux.org

- - - - - - - - - - 

Ongoing Indianisation Projects

Indian Linux Project , IndLinux.org - http://www.indlinux.org 
Project page on SourceForge  - http://www.sf.net/projects/indlinux
Main Focus : Complete language enablement at all levels, building a fully
Indian language supported Linux distribution (
http://www.indlinux.org/distro ).

Indic Computing Project  -  http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net  
Project page  at SF - http://www.sf.net/projects/indic-computing 
The Indic-Computing project is a central resource for the Indian language
developer community, featuring information on Indian language computing
issues and providing a forum where standards can be discussed and evolved.
The project intends to serve the community by collecting information on the
various aspects of Indian language text processing in one place, and
publishing this in the form of a freely accessible handbook.
http://indic-computing.sf.net/handbook/index.html

Linux Localisation Initiative -  http://lli.linux-bangalore.org  
Project page of SF - http://www.sf.net/projects/lli  
Main Focus : Translation of LDP documentation , esp HOWTOs in all Indian languages
Language Teams 

Bengali 
http://www.bengalinux.org

Gujarati 
http://www.indlinux.org/gujarati

Hindi     
http://www.indlinux.org/hindi

Kannada  
http://kannada.sourceforge.net/

Malayalam 
https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/smc

Marathi 
http://www.indlinux.org/marathi

Oriya 
http://www.indlinux.org/oriya

Punjabi  
http://punjabi-linux.sf.net/,  http://www.indlinux.org/punjabi/ 

Tamil 
http://www.tamillinux.org/ 

Telugu  
http://www.indlinux.org/telugu

Others (add you mother tongue) 
http://www.indlinux.org/otherlang.php

Other Projects
NCST  Indix 
http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix  

BharateeyaOO - OpenOffice in Indian Languages
http://www.ncb.ernet.in/bharateeyaoo 

IITM IndLinux 
http://www.tenet.res.in/Donlab/Indlinux/

[If you know anyone  who can be a potential contributor, please pass on
this message.]