Hello,
We are happy to announce the availability of a Beta version of Linux localized for Hindi.
We have localized the graphical user interface (GUI) in a genric fashion for Indian language support. The system has been developed under the project name "IndiX" and it is funded by Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India under their "Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL)" programme. The system has been put in the public domain and you can download binaries as well as source files. Related documents are also available on the net.
Knowing your deep interest in Indian language computing, we would be grateful if you can take some effort to install this system on one of your computers and give us feedback over the next four weeks.
To download this "IndiX" system, please visit http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix
Thanking you,
Keyur Shroff
PS : Interested people are invited to NCST and have a look at the work. Your feedback is very much valuable to us.
----------------------------------------------------- Keyur Shroff
Staff Scientist National Centre for Software Technology (NCST) Juhu, Mumbai, India. Tel. : (022) 6201606, 6201574
http://www.ncst.ernet.in -----------------------------------------------------
--- Keyur Shroff keyur@konark.ncst.ernet.in wrote about Indix ...
How does this thing compare with the GNU efforts for i18n, esp Pango? Can somebody explain why one should be preferred over the other? My gut-feeling is that it would be a better invested of efforts if people worked with the GNU i18n efforts rather than create new systems ...
SameerDS.
===== -- MTech Student Reconfigurable Computing Lab KReSIT, IIT-Bombay
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Find a job, post your resume. http://careers.yahoo.com
On Sat, 3 Nov 2001, Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe wrote:
--- Keyur Shroff keyur@konark.ncst.ernet.in wrote about Indix ...
How does this thing compare with the GNU efforts for i18n, esp Pango? Can somebody explain why one should be preferred over the other? My gut-feeling is that it would be a better invested of efforts if people worked with the GNU i18n efforts rather than create new systems ...
I don't want to start any flame war on this group. But my personal feeling is that Indian people are far behind in internationalization/localization technology than rest of the world because we always wait for someone who can provide solution for us. Here a good example would be of Japanese/Chinese people who modified and wrote their own X Window system (cxwin) and forced other people to incorporate their changes in new releases of original X Window system.
I contacted Open Group about the changes that we made in X Window system. But they replied that OpenType font support in X Window system is not in their current scope. So what should we do? Should we wait until someone decide to provide that support?
As far as GNU i18n efforts are concerned, Pango has support for OpenType font but I suspect they have include Indic scripts also. We contacted Owen Taylor (writer of Pango) and we'll also provide support to Pango library. We also contacted many people on gtk-i18n and XFree86-i18n list and they also agreed on the point that good solution for Indic scripts can not be provided without OpenType font support.
Pango is a very good library and it has capability to render most of the languages in this world. But client program has to use this library and hence modification is required in applications. Isn't it better to provide some solution so that you can use your applications without any modification? As far as I know, before IndiX release there was no terminal-emulator program available with Unicode support that can render Indic scripts _properly_. Now you can even use your favourite Linux application/utilities like lynx, pine, vim, etc. without modifying them.
However we don't force anyone to use this system. This is what we have contributed to Open source softwares. It is up to the user which system to use. Don't we have two Desktop environments (KDE and GNOME) on Linux?
Regards, Keyur
Keyur Shroff on Saturday, November 03, 2001
We are happy to announce the availability of a Beta version of
Linux
localized for Hindi. To download this "IndiX" system, please visit http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix
Why have you provided support for RHL based system. I'm working on SuSE Linux 7.1 Will the indiX system work on SuSE? Or will I have to change to RHL based system? I came to know abt this requirment in the Readme file on the concerned site.
Interested people are invited to NCST and have a look at the work. Your feedback is very much valuable to us.
Will I have to take any appointments?
Thanks a lot.
Regs, Kinjal Sonpal
On Tue, 6 Nov 2001, Kinjal Sonpal wrote:
Why have you provided support for RHL based system. I'm working on SuSE Linux 7.1 Will the indiX system work on SuSE? Or will I have to
You can try to use it with SuSE. Basically, you'll need to have X4.0.3 installed. It may not work with X4.1.x, but you can try.
So, please try to use it on SuSE, and if you succeed, tell us about it, if you fail, tell us what when wrong, and we'll try and patch that.
Philip
Philip S Tellis on Tuesday, November 06, 2001
You can try to use it with SuSE. Basically, you'll need to
have X4.0.3
installed. It may not work with X4.1.x, but you can try.
That's where all problems come in. I'm having a very thin download pipe. It might even take several days to download all necessary packages even with a download mgr. That's why I asked this. If I download all the packages and the installation fails (as it has happened for numerous occassions due to failed dependancies and other problems) then it might not turn out to be a very good idea. However, I'll try to see if there's some other option available. May be someone with a fat pipe and a CD writer can do the stuff (Just a thought).
So, please try to use it on SuSE, and if you succeed, tell us
about it,
if you fail, tell us what when wrong, and we'll try and patch
that.
Okay.
Philip
Regards, Kinjal Sonpal
On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Kinjal Sonpal wrote:
That's where all problems come in. I'm having a very thin download pipe. It might even take several days to download all necessary packages even with a download mgr. That's why I asked
You can come here at NCST and get a CD.
Regards, Keyur
-
Keyur Shroff -
Kinjal Sonpal -
Philip S Tellis -
Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe