The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Tamil version of Linux software likely soon

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Monday, Sep 29, 2008
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Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Tamil version of Linux software likely soon

M. Dinesh Varma

The availability of GNU/Linux standard desktop environments will boost computer literacy campaigns

CHENNAI: A core group of volunteers spearheading the free and open source movement here is in the final stages of evolving a Tamil equivalent of the existing GNU/Linux office suite applications.

The availability of the GNU/Linux standard desktop environments—GNOME and KDE—in Tamil is expected to boost the ongoing computer literacy campaigns by engaging the masses in the language close to their heart.

“We have completed almost 80 per cent of the localisation project,” India Linux User Group Chennai (ILUGC) coordinator Bharathi Subramanian told The Hindu.

A few issues relating to inputting certain local language commands and licensed local language fonts are being sorted out.

Though there are several keyboard layouts available for Tamil, the Tamil typewriter layout will shape the digital prototype.

The ILUGC was established in 1998 when a group of students and professors of the IIT-Madras resolved to romance the philosophy of free and open software pioneered by Richard Stallman. This umbilical tie is perpetuated with the premier institution hosting meetings of the Linux movement on the second Saturday of every month.

Over a decade, the GNU/Linux movement in this part of the country has grown considerably.

Not only has the membership grown, the composition of enthusiasts has turned diverse to include teachers and doctors. The mailing list currently has 1,500 members who exchange ideas and discuss strategies to take the free software movement forward. One of the primary activities of the volunteers is to organise lectures and demonstration at colleges and schools, for which it assists the ELCOT.

The very nature of the “localisation” project undertaken by the core group of ILUGC volunteers, who network with other units in Madurai, Tiruchi and Coimbatore, is an open-ended exercise in which the proponents of the GNU/Linux movement ensure a continuum of enhancements to the available architecture. “The idea is to replicate comprehensive software in Tamil that will even include all standard functions, ranging from creating a file document to word count and spell check features,” said M. Ramadas, who works with the National Resource Centre for Free and Open Source Software in Chennai.

He pointed out that a sub-set of free software enthusiasts evolved in 2006 to advance Tamil computing software. Members joined in from Cuddalore, and even Sri Lanka, inspired by the idea to develop a Tamil desktop interface for the GNU/Linux programme.

The Linux user group coordinator makes it a point of dispelling a few common misconceptions about the movement—the free is not to be equated with the “freebie” concept, and that it is not wholly non-commercial in the sense that it allows users to develop business propositions using the software.

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