[Fsf-friends] WANTED: Programmers to localize Mozilla

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

One of India's prominent Internet companies has been looking for programmers
who will help localize Mozilla to Indian languages. Those who apply need to
have at least 2-3 years experience, but above all, a passion for the
Internet and for free /open source software.  The objective of Indianizing
Mozilla is to revolutionize computing in Indian languages, especially on the
Internet. The selected individuals will be based in Mumbai. Contact
venky@indlinux.org or karunakar@indlinux.org. For more details, see the
attached job description.

Regards,

Venky
=====

Mozilla Indianization
=====================

1) Goal: Enable Mozilla browser to display & handle indian languages
properly, with proper font technology available.  Localize Mozilla interface
also to indian languages.

2) Project Requirements: All work done should be contributed back to Mozilla
codebase, so that it becomes part of it. Solutions arrived at should make
into main tree, rather than be done as adhoc hacks / addons / patches.

 i) i18n part (involving changing mozilla codebase) : a - Should be able to
 render Indian languages encoded in Unicode/UTF-8
 b - Use a standardized font technology - eg OpenType.
 c - Support any encodings standardized for a language 
 eg ISCII, TSCII, KSCLP (KGP) 

 ii) l10n part (no code change - UI customization,  translations of UI
 and Help text):
 a - Incorporate locale support (chrome level)
 b - Translate Mozilla UI into indian languages 
 c - Making indianized mozilla theme - custom graphics,logos

3) Skill sets req
 a - Knowlegde of at least two Indian languages - 
 reading & writing, script & language processing level  2.i & 2.ii.b
 b - C, C++, XML, Java for 2.i
 c - Graphics expertise for 2.ii.c
 d - For translator - good vocabulary in English & at 
 least one Indian language, previous exp in translation also helpful.
 e - Proj. mgmt skills, ability to work with volunteers 
 remotely, coordinate work through email/IM/group meetings. 
 f - Interest in localization and passion for having 
 indian languages on mozilla.
 g - Work experience of 2-3 years in the IT industry

 Current status:

Mozilla supports Unicode, so all indian languages represented in Unicode
work at unicode level - no proper rendering, if a suitable unicode font is
available. ie proper vowel sign positioning, conjuncts etc are not
avialable. Some work is on by Prabhat Hegde from Sun Microsystems on adding
devanagari support, basically by using Pango (www.pango.org) rendering
engine. He is exploring doing it using Opentype fonts. (Any one working for
this should work with Prabhat for guidance & review, as he already has
experience in Mozilla codebase )

Some hindi translation work has been done by a group based in Mumbai,
available at http://www.bttlindia.com/mozilla/ . Some translation work for
Tamil is also on. (These translations should be reused, instead of starting
from scratch)

Notes:

2.i has to be done in active participation with Mozilla developers & done at
those forums ( mozilla-i18n , mozilla-l10n )

2.ii.b is pure translation work, can be done in centralized or distributed
fashion.

2.i.c - Since ISCII, TSCII etc are not registered character sets, it may not
be possible to use them with Mozilla autodetection feature. Some workaround
could be suggested. ISCII text will basically be converted to Unicode
internally for display, enabled through use of \\\'iso8829-12\\\' ( reserved
for Indic - ISO is waiting for us to settle to something :) .

(The rationale to support ISCII is since ISCII chars will take 1byte, UTF-8
indic characters take 3bytes, or 7 bytes when used as named character
references - The debate will pick up heat when indian languages are fully
supported )


---------------------------
* Indian Linux project    *
* http://www.indlinux.org *
---------------------------
-- 
Frederick Noronha    : http://www.bytesforall.org : When we speak of free
Freelance Journalist : Goa India 403511           : software we refer to
Ph 0091.832.409490   : Cell 0 9822 122436         : freedom, not price.