Anyone who is able to read or write Tamil should be able to use the language easily on the computer too.
“When people see their language on the computer screen, they get excited and want to make more use of it,” points out Michael Kaplan, Programme Manager of the World Readiness Team of Microsoft Corp. Hence, “For any user it is necessary to get rid of the computer baggage that makes it harder for them to use their language on the computer naturally.”
Now, English enables the computer users to get more knowledge and opportunities. Those, who speak, read and write Tamil and have learnt English by necessity would be the early adaptors of Tamil computing.
They should be able to lead the growth in Tamil computing. The potential for those getting into Tamil computing is 60 million.
The average users of computer in any language are those who just use it as long as it works.
So, it is important to enable people to use Tamil on the computer the way they think rather than visually how it appears. Tamil computing should be naturalised for the average user, he says.
Mr. Kaplan, whose special interests are in Tamil, Unicode and input methods, is here to participate in the Tamil Internet Conference 2010, a concurrent event of the World Classical Tamil Conference.
He says that Microsoft incorporated Tamil Unicode in the Windows 2000 version and since then, made several changes to improve the use of it.
For Microsoft, research is on to see what people are interested in. “I want people to try more what we have and give their inputs.”
Keywords: Tamil, World Classical Tamil Conference, Tamil computing
Comments:
Congratulations!. Tamil will be universally used in days ahead.
kumar-Toronto, Canda
I have said this many times earlier on ,but nobody cared to take me seriously.Here it is once again :
" Hitherto English(US/UK) was the sole language of the INTERNET.That decided certain commercial activities to a certain level of growth. From now on CHEMMOZHI THAMIZH will become the language of communication on the INTERNET in THAMIZH -- THAMIZH INAIYAM and THAMIZH VALAI -- the networking and webbing through TAMIZH and mark my words ! There will be yet another Renaissance of THAMIZH Globally.
Good job done Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and Government of Tamil Nadu. The successful conduct of the mega Conference proves Chief Misnister's leadership. My request is that the tamil conference should be conduted atleast once in Five years. This confernce should also confer people like nobel laureate venkatraman ramakrishnan, Oscar winner AR Rahman, Chess Champion Anand Viswanathan.
A great conference organised to bring out the love for our mother tongue. we could see the spirit of tamilians and this should make a change in every tamilians mind to speak and promote Tamil in our daily life and save the historical language. Vazhga Bharatham and Vazhga Tamil Mozhi.
Anjani Nathan from Bangalore
Congrats to the Cheif Minister on this mega tribute to Tamil, which has become the crown of his contribution to Tamil. It made all of us proud of being a Tamilian and rediscover our roots. I hope this euphoria does not simply end but goes a long way in promoting Tamil all through and let us do our part in promoting Tamil our Mother Tongue. Vazhga Bharatham, Vazhga Tamil.
Lawrence Capuchin
Milano, Italy
Will be exited to see Tamil usage more on Internet.
Efforts must also be made to encourage people to speak & use Tamil & promote the use of Tamil (one only needs to see the use of German/French or Chinese or Malay or even Hindi for all purposes to understand why we must use Tamil everywhere (in science, medicine, physics, standardizing technical terms, removing sanskrit influences) - that is how we grow it & help it survive) & protect it from the two biggest threats to Tamil's existence - Hindi dominance and English dominance.