Content Development in Indian Languages Current Status , Available Tools and Future Trends

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Content Development in Indian Languages -
Current Status , Available Tools and Future
Trends

• Pramod.R ltpramod_at_mahiti.orggt

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Scope of the Talk

• Current Status of content development in Indian
  languages
• Role of Unicode
• Why Linux?
• Possible Server Client side Issues
• Demos

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Current Status of content development in Indian
languages I

• There are Established Standards or Methods
• For storing data (Encoding) Unicode
• For display OpenType fonts and Phonetic
  (Itrans) and Keyboard (Inscript) layouts for
  Input are accepted
• State of Indian Language Software is still
  Chaotic
• Most Software use Propreitory Font Encoding to
  store data

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Current Status of content development in Indian
languages II

• Features of the Current System
• Handling of Display, Input and Data-Storage is
  taken care of by the Program and not the OS
• Support for Platforms Functionality is entirely
  vendor driven
• Input Methods (Phonetic, Keyboard), available
  fonts, sort functionality are usually tightly
  integrated with the Program

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Role of Unicode I

• Definition
• Universal character set supporting most written
  scripts
• Advantages
• One Standard to encode Indian Languages
• Simple design makes importing to and from other
  encoding easier
• Allows Input Methods, Rendering Mechanism, Search
  and Sort Methods to be Independent

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Role of Unicode II

• Disadvantages
• Classic Chicken and Egg Problem
• Support on Older Windows Platforms flakey for
  some languages
• Lack of Awareness
• Support for Unicode alone is not enough for
  supporting Indian Languages
• requires support for rendering OpenType Fonts or
  an alternate Mechanism

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Why Choose Linux for your Content Development
Needs? I

• Availability of Good Editing tools, Content
  Management Systems and Databases
• Extensive Unicode Support
• Extensive Internationalization
• Definition
• Allows content to be localized without much
  effort or altering the Software itself
• Most applications support translations of their
  User Interface using Gettext or a similar
  mechanism

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Issues to take care of while developing content
Client Side

• Determine Platform used by Target Audience
• If you cannot use Unicode
• Try to limit it to the Client Side
• Use ISCII to ease conversion
• Use font encoding but really, as a last resort
• Use an existing font encoding standard

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Issues to take care of while developing content
Server Side

• Use Unicode
• Will ease migration on the client side in the
  future
• Search and Sort functionalities are easier to
  provide
• Easier to convert to and from any encoding
• Most Databases support Unicode out of the box
• Easier to manage

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Tools To Create Content (Demos)

• OpenOffice Office Suite
• Indian Language Supported in OO 1.1
• Scribus
• Powerful Layouting Tool
• Indian Language Support through QT 3.2
• Kile
• Editor to ease content Development in Latex
• Indian Language Support through UCS Module

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Tools To Publish and Manage Content (Demos)

• Blosxom
• Simple to use blog
• BabelKit
• Toolkit for multi-lingual Sites using Php with
  any Database
• Databases that support UTF-8
• Mysql
• Postgres

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Content Development with Plone (Demos)

• CMFPlone
• Content Management Framework built on top of Zope
• Uses Gettext for UserInterface
• Configurable workflow
• Additional Functionality with Products
• CMFLocalizer Gettext like Functionality
• CMFOODocument - Publish directly with OpenOffice
• Epoz WYSIWYG Editor