[Fsf-friends] Open and popular ... FLOSS in Tamil

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2302/stories/20060210003909700.htm
Open and popular

A CORRESPONDENT

An open-source suite of Tamil applications for the Windows
operating system is the first of its kind for the platform.

PANACEA DREAMWEAVERS, a Chennai-based software company, has
released an open source suite of Tamil applications and tools
into the public domain. It includes an accounting package,
two dictionaries, a management software for self-help groups
(SHGs), a simple text editor and a feature-rich word
processor, and about 250 free fonts. Most of the products
ship with the source code.

It is claimed that this is the first such initiative by a
company or organisation in the area of public domain Tamil
software. A similar effort was sponsored by the Central
Government, in which a collection of tools was acquired from
private players and released for public consumption in a
compact-disk form by Minister for Communications Dayanidhi
Maran. However, none of the software included in the package
was in open source format.

Besides, the company claims that its efforts are a first in
the Microsoft Windows-based Tamil computing environment. Most
open-source Tamil applications are developed for the Linux
operating system.

Open-source software is software whose source code is made
available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify or
redistribute the source code without paying royalties or
fees. Open source is associated with collaborative
development, wherein developers who have access to the
product's code correct any problems or deficiencies in it or
add additional features, thereby helping the software to
evolve. Many such applications are backed by a large number
of developers from all over the world and have evolved into
robust systems.

Some well-known examples of open-source initiatives are the
Linux operating system, the Integrated Development
Environment Eclipse, the Apache web server and the Mozilla
suite, including the web browser Firefox, which recorded its
100 millionth download recently.

One of the most prominent advocates of free software is the
Free Software Movement started by Richard Stallman in 1983.
The movement is also active in India, but its adherents focus
all their energies on writing software for open-source
operating systems such as Linux and not for the commercial
Windows platform.

In the CD under review, the products are neatly divided into
sections: Panacea Apps (short for applications), Panacea
Desk, Panacea Valaiyodi, and Source.

Panacea Apps comprises Mugavari (Tamil-English address book),
Sangam Pro (SHG management package), Selvam (accounting
software), Valluvan (documentation software), and
Pulavan-Paalam (dictionaries).

The Panacea Desk folder comprises Pathippu-250 (collection of
250 fonts), R4U (English-Tamil word processor), Saarathy
(keyboard driver) and Tamil Olai (simple Tamil text editor).

The Source folder includes the source code of all the
products except R4U and Valaiyodi.

According to the company, Sangam Pro is meant for
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to assess and evaluate
the performance of SHGs. Some of the features are the ability
to enter and save details of loans, repayments, meeting
schedules, deposits and membership.

Selvam, the software for maintaining accounts in Tamil, is
aimed at small and medium enterprises and is also suited for
home users. R4U, a Tamil-English word processor, easily
creates Tamil and even multilingual documents. Users can
easily switch between English and Tamil typing.

The other products in the suite are also useful and easy to
navigate. The company's stated mission to develop the
Valaiyodi browser into one that can translate English Web
pages into Tamil is something to look forward to.

Th applications have a few bugs, but they are minor and
should not stand in the way of encouraging such attempts. The
country sorely needs free software and open-source
initiatives for the Information Technology revolution to
reach most segments of society. And it is widely accepted
that the best way to go about achieving this is to write
software in the language of the people and make it available
free of cost.

Nevertheless, a few points need to be made. The collection of
fonts in TAB and TAM formats is no doubt excellent but run
the risk of obsolescence in a world that is quickly adopting
Unicode as the standard for recognising non-English textual
characters.

In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a
unique a number for each character. In other words, Unicode
represents a character in an abstract way, and leaves the
visual rendering (size, shape, font or style) to other
software, such as a Web browser or a word processor.

Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP make extensive use of Unicode as
an internal representation of text, while Unix-like operating
systems such as Linux, BSD and Mac OS X have adopted it as
the basis of representation of multilingual text.

Secondly, the dictionaries - both of which are
well-structured and simple to use - need to be updated. The
Tamil language has kept pace with the modern world and a
dictionary with contemporary words and phrases and their
usage will be most handy.

It is hoped that the budding entrepreneurs behind the venture
will do what is needed, for the collective good of the Tamil
computing world. Panacea Dreamweavers, which is hardly a year
old, is the brainchild of a group of entrepreneurs whose goal
is to develop solutions for the Tamil language computing
space, according to the founders. Their corporate philosophy
is that Tamil language software must not place any financial
compulsions on the end-user.

The software developer community in India and abroad would do
well to emulate this endeavour and come out with more such
products so that the divide between the digital haves and
have-nots is bridged.