Kannada Software, WHAT KANNADIGAS NEED TO KNOW

[ellakannada]

Recommendations About Kannada Software in BhashaIndia.com :: Discussion Forum


We all need to study this and discuss among ourselves as kannadigas. We need to understand the situation of KANNADA SOFTWARE.

www.BhashaIndia.com WE all need to visit this website and see what is happenning to our languages in INDIA. Expecially KANNADA.

http://www.bhashaindia.com/cgw/EN/index.aspx


BhashaIndia has launched a Community Glossary Program in ಕನ್ನಡ and தமிழ். Join and contribute! BhashaIndia has launched a Community Glossary Program in ಕನ್ನಡ and தமிழ். Join and contribute!

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ABOUT: Recommendations About Kannada Software

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KANNADIGAS need to read this thread to understand what it is happenning in KANANDA SOFATWARE.

Karnataka Governament has an agreement with MICROSOFT to install KANNADA on all of their products.

NUDI SOFTWARE belogs to Govt. of KARNATAKA. They are doing it to provide free for all kannadigas all over the world. We need to see what is all happening and who are all involved.

THIS IS BEING DONE BY GOVT. OF INDIA. www.BhashaIndia.com . This is located in Mysore. Manasa Gangothri Campus.

Kannadigas, Please copy and paste this url and study
http://www.bhashaindia.com/ForumV2/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=2
&MessageID=194&TopicPage=&Post=True&AutoApprove=false

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This what is that URL for easy read:

Group: Forum Members
Active: 5/7/2004
Posts: 3

Recommendations About Kannada Software

1. Users Interface across Existing Softwares.
Instead of creating altogether an exclusive word processor for Kannada Language, efforts should be made to bring users interface with already existing standard softwares such as ‘page maker’, ‘win word’ etc.

2. Original Commands to be continued to be used.
There is a tendency to translate the computer commands into Kannada Language. Though it is called as Kannada Language, in reality these commands are replaced with much alien Sanskrit terminologies. They are more unfamiliar than the existing English Commands. Whoever is using the computer is familiar with the original commands. These commands not only familiar but also frequently used (Such as ‘computer’ instead ‘Ganaka Yantra’). Hence it is recommended that there is no need to translate the commands into Kannada (Sanskrit) Language. They can only be transliterated into Kannada Script.
If any extra explanation is necessary for any commands such as ‘PREFARENCES’ etc, we can create ‘pop-up help’s to all such complex commands.

3. Introduce Unicode.
It should preferably in Unicode. At present only ‘Baraha’ and ‘Nudi’ are Unicode compatible.

4. Create filters to import files.
Provide filters to import all files created by other major Kannada software’s which are already in use for more then ten years.

5. Key board Drivers.
Different software are used by different people. Users may not be familiar with the key board drives as they have different designs, and patterns. Hence it is recommended that each design should be provided its own key board driver to facilitate the user. It may be mentioned here that the Government of Karnataka has standardized the key boards to be used for computers. The same may be accepted by all manufacturers, vendors etc.

6. Create custom key board layout.
Create custom key board layout for the user to make any adjustment, whenever unique requirements are needed. Vendors have also introduced their own layouts along with existing key board layouts. This has resulted in many key board layouts. However, when a particular user wants any adjustment in the key board design due to any special reason, there should be provision for that.

7. Open Source Initiative.
The source code used to develop this software would be freely available on the internet on the lines of Linux Open Source Initiative.

The significance of Open Source is,

a) Due to the perpetual expansion of possibilities, the usage of Kannada software is bound to come across with new and unknown requirements. If freely available any user can upgrade with the free source code to suit their need. The user can then Introduce his changes back to the open source, so that this will aid other users as well. this will help continuously to expand the usage of Kannada to all fields.

Since it is free, common usage of Kannada software will increase.

c) There will be a collective participation in the development of the software by all users of Kannada Software.


8. A permanent Screening committee under the IT Ministry, has to be formed to administer the new upgrades to the free source code. This is very important, since various users could introduce many changes and upgrades. This committee will screen, evaluate and incorporate the changes.

It is suggested that the following members may be included in the committee.

Writers
1. Sri. K. P. Purnachandra Tejaswi
2. Prof. G. Venkata Subbaiah

Linguists
3. Lingadevaru Halemane
4. Dr. B. Mallikarjun
5. Navakarnataka Publications.

Software Engineers
6. Dr. Sreenatha Shastir
7. Dr. Pavanaja
_________________________________________________________________
namaskaara,
Thanks for the detailed post, your concerns and genuine interests. Your posting is really comprehensive.

1. Users Interface across Existing Softwares.
Instead of creating altogether an exclusive word processor for Kannada Language, efforts should be made to bring users interface with already existing standard softwares such as ‘page maker’, ‘win word’ etc.


This is being taken care by Microsoft. Hindi UI is already released for Office and Windows. Kannada and other languages are in the pipeline. I am very sure that other software companies will follow suite.

2. Original Commands to be continued to be used.
There is a tendency to translate the computer commands into Kannada Language. Though it is called as Kannada Language, in reality these commands are replaced with much alien Sanskrit terminologies. They are more unfamiliar than the existing English Commands. Whoever is using the computer is familiar with the original commands. These commands not only familiar but also frequently used (Such as ‘computer’ instead ‘Ganaka Yantra’). Hence it is recommended that there is no need to translate the commands into Kannada (Sanskrit) Language. They can only be transliterated into Kannada Script.
If any extra explanation is necessary for any commands such as ‘PREFARENCES’ etc, we can create ‘pop-up help’s to all such complex commands.


Please read my article Writing about IT in Kannada available at http://kannada.sourceforge.net/WritingITinKannada.pdf. The article is in Kannada.

3. Introduce Unicode.
It should preferably in Unicode. At present only ‘Baraha’ and ‘Nudi’ are Unicode compatible.
All new geneartion OS, platform, Database, development tools support Unicode. Microsoft is also among them. Microsoft has introduced Kannada support employing Unicode in Windows XP/2003, Office XP/2003, SQL Server, Sharepoint, Visual Studio.NET, etc. One can develop an application employing Unicode without the help of any other tools. There is no need of Nudi or Baraha. In fact, Nudi and Baraha have just Unicode compatible keyboard drivers. They don't provide opentype font which is required to display the Unicode text. Another fact is that their Unicode compatible keyboard driver (other name for IME) works only on WIndows XP and 2003, which have Kannada built-in. That means, the Unicode of Nudi and Baraha are redundant.

4. Create filters to import files.
Provide filters to import all files created by other major Kannada software’s which are already in use for more then ten years.

Good suggestion. Baraha has given a font converter utility between major software being used in Kannada. Office XP and 2003 can import ISCII text files and convert them into Unicode.

5. Key board Drivers.
Different software are used by different people. Users may not be familiar with the key board drives as they have different designs, and patterns. Hence it is recommended that each design should be provided its own key board driver to facilitate the user. It may be mentioned here that the Government of Karnataka has standardized the key boards to be used for computers. The same may be accepted by all manufacturers, vendors etc.


This keyboard driver is available for download at BhashaIndia.com web-site (http://www.bhashaindia.com/doc/IndicIME1v5.zip). One can also use Baraha and Nudi keyboard drivers which are as per GoK standard.

6. Create custom key board layout.
Create custom key board layout for the user to make any adjustment, whenever unique requirements are needed. Vendors have also introduced their own layouts along with existing key board layouts. This has resulted in many key board layouts. However, when a particular user wants any adjustment in the key board design due to any special reason, there should be provision for that.


There is a keyboard layout creator available for downlaod at Microsoft's globaldev web-site (http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx)

7. Open Source Initiative.
Please visit http://kannada.sourceforge.net.

8. A permanent Screening committee under the IT Ministry, has to be formed to administer the new upgrades to the free source code. This is very important, since various users could introduce many changes and upgrades. This committee will screen, evaluate and incorporate the changes.


Fully agree. I have written to Mr Rajiv Chawla, Secretary, E-Governance, Govt of Karnataka, about an year ago, requesting to have a permanent committee under DIT which will take care of all issues related to standardisation. I have met him a number of times and reiterated this fact. I will just mention one example wherein this requirement is evident.

Please read the proposed Kannada Unicode chart at http://tdil.mit.gov.in/prop_uni/Kannada.pdf. TDIL (Technology Development for Indian Languages), under Ministry of I.T>, Govt of India is the voting member at Unicode COnsortium. They represent India and Indian Languages at Unicode. They collect the recommendations from each state, compile and submit to the Unicode consortium. The above mentioned document is about Kannada, sent from DIT, GoK. There is a recommendation in that doc to allot a Unicode codepoint for the arkavattu (reph) at 0CF5. Unicode is a character represantation and not a font glyph set representation. Arkavattu is a display issue. It is not a character and hence there is no need to allot a codpoint to that glyph. Chapter 9 of Unicode book (page 246) by Unicode consortium has dealt with the issue of arkavattu. You can download the article from http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch09.pdf. Go to page 31 of this file. The solution for the arkavattu problem is given there.

It is clear that there should be a team consisting of technical and linguistic experts who will help the DIT. With the absense of such a team, wrong recommendations will be sent, as shown in the example above.

Thanks and regards.

sigONa,

Pavanaja ಪವನಜ

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[ekaviadmin]

Excellent. The initiaitive taken by Dr. Pavanaja in promoting Kannada internationally deserves all praise. May his tribe increase and bring in more laurels to Kannada. I think E Kavi should join hands with Dr. Pavanaja and help him in his endeavour.

[ellakannada]

Development of Kannada Software and what is going on....and for CLARIFICATIONS


Please look into the facts about the development of Kannada Software and what is going on...... and see what it could be done. We are all here to help in development of KANNADA SOFTWARE.

Why it is taking so long time for KANNADA to be on all the PLATFORMS ?

IS't NUDI Software belongs to Govt. of Karnataka ? It belongs to people of KARNATAKA STATE and to all KANANDIGAS all over the world.
Why this software is not on all the PLATFORMS ?
IS THERE A REASON FOR DELAY IN THIS ?

There are more developments like this going on in KANNADA. I have visited these URL's to know more about progress of Kannada Software. There are somany Kannadigas are doing development work on Kannada all of them have to be promoted and recognised by all of us.

We all need to compile all the websites that are helping to develop Kannada Sofatware, NOT JUST ONE or TWO. All need to be looked into. This is important for KANNADA.

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.p...6&forum_id=2968

There is a bug in the collation chart for Kannada
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UCA/latest/allkeys.txt

Test for Unicode support in Web browsers - kannada
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/kannada.html

Kannada Unicode Sample
http://www.xenotypetech.com/samplepdfs/KN_Sample.html

Kannada Range: 0C80–0CFF
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0C80.pdf

http://www.xenotypetech.com/samplepdfs/KN_Sample.pdf

Status of Kannada Computing on the Internet.
http://www.sharma-home.net/people/adsharma...guages/kannada/

Article on "Writing IT in Kannada" (in kannada) By Dr.U.B.Pavanaja
http://kannada.sourceforge.net/WritingITinKannada.pdf

Kannada Inscript keyboard layout
http://www.indlinux.org/keymap/kannada.php

http://kannada.sourceforge.net/

http://www.baraha.com/html_help/baraha/uni...arahadirect.htm

http://www.baraha.com/html_help/baraha/unicode_support.htm

Java Unicode Screen Keyboard - KANNADA
http://home.att.net/~jameskass/keybkann.htm

Kannada Keyboards and Stickers
http://www.datacal.com/dce/kannada-overlays.htm

An article about Kannada Software
http://www.prajavani.net/may192004/wedi.asp

Visit www.kannadakasturi.com A website for Kannada Dictionary is in existence for all of us to use and reffer to the website. This is an interactive website.
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Kannada as one of 3 languages



TIMES NEWS NETWORK



Bangalore: The Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board has asked all students studying in tenth standard to study Kannada as one of the three languages.
Migrant students should obtain prior permission from the commissioner for public instruction. The KSEEB will not entertain any request for changes in language combination at the fag end of the year before examinations.
Also, the KSEEB has stopped registration of eighth standard students as it is not exclusively with high schools only and is also offered by many higher primary schools also.
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Visit www.vidyanidhi.org.in is an interactive website and is in existence much much before any other websites. Vidyanidhi is one step ahead. It can be easily called as the first database driven Kannada Unicode web-site.

This is what I have received from Dr. U. B. Pavanaja, WHO was a part of KGP till MARCH 2003. Credit should be given to all Kannadigas who participated in the development of Kannada Software.

These questions were asked to CLARIFY things on the DEVELOPMENT WORK on KANNADA SOFTWARE and IT'S Progress that has been made so far.......

IS THERE ANYTHING WRONG INFORMATION PROVIDED BY DR. PAVANAJA ? PLEASE LET US KNOW. WE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT IT.
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In a message dated 5/23/2004 8:44:04 AM Pacific Daylight Time, pavanaja@vishvakannada.com writes:
namaskaara,

> Several questions to KGP are:
> (this will clear some doubts in the minds of kannadigas)
>
>
> 1. Was Pavanaja part of KGP Executive Committee at any point in KGP ? If YES, From_______________ to _______________

Yes. From inception up to March 2003.


> 1.a. Was Pavanaja part GoK (Governament of Karnataka) Committee that was formed along with others from KGP to look into various aspects related to stadardisation and implementation of Kannada on computers ?

Yes.

> 2. Was Pavanaja part of all the development that happenned on KANNADAat KGP as he has written in this email ?

Yes.

> 3. Who Standardised the keyboard layout for kannada ?

The committee appointed by GoK

> 3.a. Who did the original keyboard layout for kannada ?

K P Rao

> 4. Who Standardised the font glyph sets for Kannada ? Is this monolingual truetype font glyph sets for Kannada ?

The committee appointed by GoK. Yes, it is monolingual truetype font glyph set.

> 4.a. Did the GoK Commitee Standardisedbi-lingual font for Kannada ?

No.

> 4.b. Is there a Standardised bi-lingual font for Kannada ? If YES who did this ? Did the GoK formed Committee involved in it ? When was it done ? Who were involved ?

There is no bi-lingual font standard for Kannada.

> 5. Who owns NUDI Software ?

GoK

> 6. What Standards NUDI follows ?Please write in detail.

The keyboard layout, monolingual font glyph set, Import/Export ISCII, Save As HTML

> 7. Whose Standards are those?

Keyboard and font are GoK standard. ISCII is GoI standard. HTML is W3C standard.

There is one problem in Nudi's Export to ISCII. It breaks GoI standard when arkavattu is involved.

> 8. Does Nudi provide opentype font which is required for rendering Kannada Unicode text?

No.

> 9. Does Nudi support unicode ? If YES to what extent in full ?

Nudi just has a Unicode compatible keyboard driver which works only on Windows XP (and on Windows 2000, if there is a Kannada Opentype font present)

Nudi's editor has a feature "Save As Unicode". But the file saved as Unicode can not be opend again by Nudi. In other words, Nudi's editor can not edit a Unicode document.

> 9.a. Who took up the issue of unicode for kannada ?

Myself. If others have done it, they can show me the email that was posted by them on the indic@unicode.org mailing list or any other email sent directly to the members of Unicode Technical Committee.

> 10. Is NUDI a FREE SOFTWARE ?

No. Nudi is a Freeware but not a Free Software. Nudi's sourcecode is not available in public domain. A free software is the one whose source code is available in public domain as per GNU.
_______________________________________________________________________
>
> IT IS OK TO HAVE HEALTHY DISCUSSION ON KANNADA.
>
> There are some personal attacks are going on here on some Kannadigas. We need to stop this for the sake of kannada and for it's development. We need all kannadigas to participate in it's development.

I agree 100%

Regards,
Pavanaja---
________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Pavanaja wrote to Naveen:

namaskaara Naveen,

You are advocating for opensource and Nudi at the same time. I hope you
are aware of the difference between free software (Opensource software, GPLed) and
freeware. Nudi is not a free software. It is a freeware.

To promote Kannada on Linux, Nudi has to be ported to Linux. To do that Nudi should be made opensource. I have been advocating for this for more than two years.

I have never said one should use only Windows XP and should not use Linux. Currently 99% of the people use Windows on desktop. Since new systems are coming with Windows XP by default, I wrote an article explaing people how to enable Kannada on that.

If you have Windows XP and Office 2003, you don't need Nudi and Baraha. That was the message I wanted to convey.

I never said you should discard all existing systems and buy these new systems to use Kannada. Many people are using XP but not aware that Kannada support is built-in there. I wanted to help those people.

Any database program made using non-Unicode technologies have a limited life.

It is exteremely difficult to develop database applications using VB and a databse like Access or SQL server using Nudi. Try yourself. You will have to use the bilingual
font of Nudi, which is not as per any standard. Sorting is not possible in Access or SQL server.

You need to get all the data from the database, sort them using the functions provided by Nudi SDK (or Baraha SDK) and then put them back into the databse. Imagine that there are 25 lakh names in a database (as in Karnataka Telephone ditrectory) and you want to insert one name into that. Think about the time it will take to accomplish this task if it os done in the front-end (VB) and not in the back-end database (SQL Server or Access). If you use Unicode and VB.NET, it is very easy and fast.

Of course, you can also use non-MS solutions like Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP. One small hitch here -Kannada sorting on MySql is not yet perfect. But since it is opensource, you can pathc it up yourself. This is the reason why I was advocating that Nudi
should be made opensource.

The sorting of Kannada is perfect on Nudi. This algorithm should be made available to opensource communtiy.

There are other problems regarding Kannada on Linux.

There is no perfect opentype font available for Kannada as of now on Linux. The rendering of Kannada opentype font on Linux and openoffice is still not perfect. These have to be perfected.

I am not saying that they will never be perfected.

sigONa,
Pavanaja
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Re: Kannada Standards -myths and facts
____________________________________________________________
From: "Dr. U.B. Pavanaja" <pavanaja@vishvakannada.com>
Cc: pavanaja@vishvakannada.com
Date: Fri May 21, 2004 2:47am
Subject: Kannada Standards -myths and facts

namaskaara,

There are lot of misinformations under circulation about Kannada Standards on Computers. I was a member of the committee which looked into various aspects related to stadardisation and implementation of Kannada on computers, appointed by Govt of Karnataka (GoK). I thought it is better to give the correct picture. Here it is:

Myth-1: Kannada Ganaka Parishat (KGP) did standardisation of Kannada on computers.
Fact: There was a committee appointed by GoK to look into various aspects related to stadardisation and implementation of Kannada on computers. I was also a member of this committee. The committe was chaired by (late) A R Chandrahasa Gupta, then Secretary, Dept of Kannada and Culture, GoK. Some other members are-
Prof Baraguru Ramachandrappa, ex-officio, then President, Kannada Development Authority (KDA)
K C Ramam Murthy, then Director, Dept of Kannada and Culture, GoK
Dr E V Ramana Reddy, then Director, Directorate of Information Technology (DIT), GoK
Dr N Basavaradhya, ex-officio, President, Kannada Sahithya Parishat
Dr Mallikarjun, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore
Dr Krishnayya, Regional Research Centre, Udupi
Srinatha Sastry, Scientist, NAL, Bangalore
Dr Panditharadhya, Reader, Kuvempu Kannada Adhyayana Kendra, Univ of Mysore
Dr Pavanaja U B, Computer expert, Bangalore
A Sathyanarayana, KDA
Among these members, myself, Srinatha Sastry, Dr Panditharadhya and Sathyanarayana were also (then) executive committee members of KGP. But the letter from GoK informing the formation of the standardisation committee did not mention that these are ex-officio members of KGP. Hence the credit of standardising Kannada on computers can not be given to KGP.

This committee never met after the year 2000. This committee did not take up the issue of Kannada Unicode.

Myth-2: KGP standardised the keyboard layout for Kannada.
Fact: The committee mentioned above did it. The standardised keyboard layout is wrongly referred to as KGP layout. It has to be GoK layout. This layout was originally evolved by K P Rao. The committee modified K P Rao's layout slightly. This fact is actually mentioned in Nudi.

Myth-3: KGP standardised the font glyph sets for Kannada
Fact: The committee mentioned above did it. The committee did standardise monolingual truetype font glyph sets for Kannada. Committee did not standardise bi-lingual font. Hence the bi-lingual font distributed bu Nudi is not as per any standard.

Myth-4: Nudi follows GoK standards.
Fact: Nudi follows GoK standard in these areas-
monolingual truetye font glyph set
keyboard layout
save as HTML
Nudi's non-standard features are-
Nudi contains a bi-lingual truetype font which is not as per any standard
Nudi's Save As ISCII breaks the Govt of India standard when arkavattu is involved.
Nudi uses a scheme called Kannada Script Code for Language Processing (KSCLP) for sorting, which is not as per any standard. But the fact is that this KSCLP is a good solution for Kannada Sorting.
Myth-5: Nudi is owned by KGP
Fact: Nudi is owned by GoK. This fact is mentioned in Nudi itself. But I have media and people referring to it as owned by KGP.

Myth-6: Nudi supports Unicode
Fact: Nudi has just a keyboard driver for Unicode which works only on Windows XP and 2003. Windows XP and 2003 have built-in support for Unicode making the Unicode feature of Nudi redundant. Nudi does not provide opentype font which is required for rendering Kannada Unicode text. Nudi's Software Development Kit (SDK) does not support Unicode.
Another interesting fact: Type some text in Kannada using Nudi 4. Save it as Unicode. Then open the same file again in Nudi 4. It shows it as junk. Nudi cannot display a Kannada Unicode text file created by XP or Linux. That means Nudi's Unicode support is of no use.

Myth-7: Nudi is a Free Software
Fact: There is a difference between Freeware and Free Software. Nudi is a Freeware but not a Free Software (Baraha is also a Freeware). As per GNU, Free Software is the one where the source code is also available in public domain. Nudi's source code is not available in public domain. It is not an opensource software. Only binary (executable) of Nudi is free. If you are a software expert, found some bugs in Nudi (there are many) and want to correct them, then you can not do so.

Please feel to ask if you need any clarifications. No personal attacks please.

sigONa,
Pavanaja
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Dr. U.B. Pavanaja
CEO, Vishva Kannada Softech
Think Globally, Act locally
______________________________________________________________________

We also had started a program called as "WE-TALK" Web Enabled Teaching and Learning Kannada. With all your help, I think we can further the progress on WE-TALK. This is being done under the leadership of Prof. Harold Schiffman of UPENN. Some of you might know about this allready. If any of you are interested in knowing further please let me know.

If any of you have any information on this or suggestions contrary to this, please write.

It helps to discuss the matter openly.

We are all working for the development of Kannada Software.

If any of you has any questions on these please write a letter.

Thanks
Sincerely

V. M. Kumaraswamy

[ellakannada]

In a message dated 5/25/2004 6:27:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time, baraha@hotmail.com writes:

Dear Kumaraswamy,

Thank you very much for bringing this article in Prajavani to my notice. I
am currently on vacation in India. So I could not access my emails before.

Unicode is good (it has some bugs/issues yet to be fixed) because it gives a
common code for Kannada that can be used on different operating systems such
as Microsoft Windows, Linux etc. So, Unicode is useful when porting Kannada
text from one OS to another. But, Unicode is not the only way to use Kannada
on computers. We have been successfully using Kannada (through Baraha/Nudi)
without using Unicode. We have implemented sorting, searching, databases,
text conversion etc. without using Unicode.

regards
Vasu

[ajay.ks]

Well, there is a new addition to this list of softwares, I feel this is much better than the rest in the sense that it is not only as free as any other free software, it is also easily available and it has experimented with other technology that has never before been tried out on the language of Kannda.

Please do see this website and discuss it's advantages.

http://quillpad.in/kannada/