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 * ---------------------------