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Trying to get localized Linux on it by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-08 04:13 · Score: 1, Interesting · on Photos and Commentary On AMD's PIC

Some of the volunteers of the Indian Linux Project, along with team members of a few other South Asian Linux localization projects are trying to get Linux running on a low cost Geode based system. Join the indlinux-group mailing list if you are interested in helping out. The latest Indlinux Newsletter mentions this effort briefly.

Trying to get localized Linux on it by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-08 04:13 · Score: 1, Interesting · on Photos and Commentary On AMD's PIC

Some of the volunteers of the Indian Linux Project, along with team members of a few other South Asian Linux localization projects are trying to get Linux running on a low cost Geode based system. Join the indlinux-group mailing list if you are interested in helping out. The latest Indlinux Newsletter mentions this effort briefly.

Re:Interesting how it will work by pamri · 2004-12-03 00:48 · Score: 2, Informative · on Linux to be Available in 13 Indian Languages

Windows(XP) and Linux more or less support the same no. of languages. The latter more, because of obvious reasons. In fact, the technology ( Opentype fonts ) used for Indian and other Complex text languages like Arabic, Urdu, Khmer,etc., was actually created by Microsoft and now supported in QT, GTK and other X11 apps that use the m17 library As far as Indian language is concerned, Microsoft had the first mover advantage in terms of input & reading Indian languages, but in the past 4-5 years, Linux has caught on and is ahead in terms of translation of applications & DE's like kde,gnome,mozilla, openoffice.org,etc.,

Some links:

Indlinux A project localising FLOSS apps into Hindi and providing support for other teams working on other Indian languages.

Indlinux wiki has got a fortnightly newsletter and other pieces of info.

Kannada Localisation Initiative a project localising and translating FLOSS applications into Kannada

Indic computing project Similar to Indlinux in structure, but focussing on documentation and support for ISV's, linguists and Developers

Re:Interesting how it will work by pamri · 2004-12-03 00:48 · Score: 2, Informative · on Linux to be Available in 13 Indian Languages

Windows(XP) and Linux more or less support the same no. of languages. The latter more, because of obvious reasons. In fact, the technology ( Opentype fonts ) used for Indian and other Complex text languages like Arabic, Urdu, Khmer,etc., was actually created by Microsoft and now supported in QT, GTK and other X11 apps that use the m17 library As far as Indian language is concerned, Microsoft had the first mover advantage in terms of input & reading Indian languages, but in the past 4-5 years, Linux has caught on and is ahead in terms of translation of applications & DE's like kde,gnome,mozilla, openoffice.org,etc.,

Some links:

Indlinux A project localising FLOSS apps into Hindi and providing support for other teams working on other Indian languages.

Indlinux wiki has got a fortnightly newsletter and other pieces of info.

Kannada Localisation Initiative a project localising and translating FLOSS applications into Kannada

Indic computing project Similar to Indlinux in structure, but focussing on documentation and support for ISV's, linguists and Developers

Indian languages ... :) by Gopal.V · 2004-11-25 19:09 · Score: 1 · on Intel Helping Asia to Use Linux

IndLinux ... I'm going to their stall in Linux Bangalore 2004.

Oh btw, I would puke everytime I read the malayalam translation of "Retry, Cancel, Abort" :)

As far as I remember, I worked on the Pango module for malayalam.
I admit that I was young, foolish and caffiene enhanced sleep deprived when I wrote that , can someone throw that away and rewrite it properly ?.

L10n issues by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-18 19:19 · Score: 3, Informative · on Is Linux Improving Life Of Poor In India?

One of the major scoring points for Linux in the e-gov scene in India in local language. Indic language support in GNOME/KDE/Mozilla/OpenOffice.org is improving rapidly - sometimes the Open Source developers are there even before M$. For an idea on the l10n scene in India - take a look at this newsletter.

However, one of the major bottlenecks of implementing Linux in rural areas is the power situation. People have tried a number of interesting stuff - solar power, manure power and whatnot - but these things can push up costs astronomically.

Moreover, there is a lack of trained professionals who can handle Linux systems - finding people to handle highly customised LTSP or kiosk based installations can be a real PITA. Support becomes a major headache - as people are not at all familar with troubleshooting through the command line. However, things are slowly improving - some states are introducing Linux courses in the school curriculum as apparent from this post.

Some idea about the Linux scene in India can be guaged from the interviews at this site.

Re:Coming soon Indows and Inux by ggvaidya · 2004-03-19 21:22 · Score: 1 · on Builder.com Writers Outsourced to India

Perhaps you mean IndLinux?

Re:Credit where credit is due by nikkipolya · 2004-03-17 15:28 · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Plans to Create Local Language Software

Naa. The local language support in Windows has consistently been garbage for most of the Indian languages. On the contrary, KDE and Gnome have excellent support for many Indian languages, including at the terminal level with gcc and glibc support!

Where is windows?

translations & OS by pamri · 2002-12-31 23:42 · Score: 5, Informative · on Microsoft Forced To Translate Office Into Nynorsk

Which brings up questions for Open Source developers: What's involved in translating programs? Is there a process that can be followed to make the inevitable easier? Is there a group providing guidelines for this already? -- Do you work in program translation? Step up and do tell." Yes to all. Translating OS s/w is no big deal & doesn't require any programming skills. Kde & Gnome have great documentation, resources all neatly organised. So, I will let them do the talking:

The GNOME Translation Project

KDE i18n project

Translation howto for kannada - This is a howto I wrote yesterday for people wanting to translate their language into kannada(an indian language spoken in karnataka). But the concept applies to all indian languages & other languages too to a certain extent. [OK, I confess some self interest is involved here :-)]

Actually, kannada support came first on windows XP thanks to the karnataka govt support & since MS & Adobe developed opentype fonts(must for complexity of indian languages), but thanks to the Pango team, we hope to have support before MS does. And many state govts in India are also pressurising MS to bring Win XP in their languages and already bengali,hindi & tamil(kde is fully translated into tamil.) are in the works. But, we hope to set it right, soon.

Re:Where the Hindi and Bengai translations? by unmadindu · 2002-12-26 19:26 · Score: 1 · on Indian Government Moves to Let Linux In

1. Bengali - www.bengalinux.org, www.nongnu.org/freebangfont, www.banglapenguin.org
2. Hindi - www.indlinux.org

Language is probably part of the reason. by RealAlaskan · 2002-10-14 10:37 · Score: 1, Flamebait · on Indian Government Chooses Linux for Academia

Language is probably part of the reason that Linux is catching on there. Look here and here, for a start. They've been working on the problem for a while, and are as likely to make progress as is MS. Maybe more likely; I doubt that MS is very interested in localizing their products, even in Hindi. I suspect that Tamil is a complete non-starter, as far as MS is concerned.

The fact that this decision will help to produce a homegrown hightech industry is a great bonus that reliance on MS would have precluded, but it certainly isn't the only reason for going this route. It's certainly going to be good for us

Re: There is an Indian Linux distro in development by The+Cydonian · 2002-10-09 01:50 · Score: 2, Informative · on Indian Government Goes For Free Software

Indian Linux is your answer. The website says it will be developed in all 18 official Indian languages.

Might be slightly misleading of course; I'm presuming they really meant all 10 ISCII ("Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange") alphabets in transmutation to give, I don't know, 12 or so languages. Will be interesting to see if they later provide for transcribing the Arabic script as well; the website at present seems to be suggesting only native Indian scripts. Not to accuse them of ethnic bias; I'm pretty sure it's plain intellectual laziness.

A More Detailed Explanation:- Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi and Nepali use the Devnagri script; a few languages such as Konkani, Manipuri use the Roman script and scripts of other languages. Sindhi, Kashmiri and Urdu use the Arabic script (or modifications of it thereof). Unicode doesn't recognise the Assamese script to be different from the Bengali one, but provides for two additional Assamese-only characters; not sure if ISCII does that as well. (IndLinux's page gives seperate keymaps for Assamese and Bengali; I neither speak nor read these languages, so I don't know if they are significantly distinct.) All other languages, namely, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada have their own unique scripts.

Tamil is way ahead in implementation though; the Tamil Linux group is very active; the website says you can use Tamil in Mandrake 9.0. Can't read Tamil myself, but the KDE snapshots provided look extremely cool to me.