[Kannada] Kannada on Fedora Core 3

[Pavanaja U B]

Namaskaara,

Thanks Arun Sharma. I agree with you on most counts.

According to me the elements of Indic (and Kannada) support are -
1. Entering the Indic data -IME
    -Inscript, typewriter, transliteration, ...any one or more than one as
per user's choice
2. Displaying the Indic data -Font
    -Opentype for Unicode and good rendering engine
3. Storing the Indic Data
    -Unicode
4. Collation as per Indic sorting order
    -Unicode Collation Algorithm with additional logics for some specific
cases
5. User Interface in Indic.


Items 1 to 4 constitute what is known as enabling Indic. Item 5 completes
the K12n (or I11n). Microsoft has proceeded in the logical order, that is
focusing on 1 to 4 first, and then going for item 5. But the opensource
community is following the top-down approach, ie., starting from item 5. 
 
As correctly pointed out by Arun Sharma, the priority should be-
1. To have a perfect rendering mechanism for Kannada opentype fonts.
2. To have good opentype fonts
3. To have a perfect sorting engine for Kannada
 
After achieving these, one should target the translation of UI. Items 1 and
3 have been achieved, I believe.
 
Since I do believe in this approach, with a good intention, I conducted the
FREE workshop (with support from guys like Pramod, Karunakar, Sunil, etc)
for nearly 30 participants on creating opentype fonts at Bangalore, 2 years
ago. But I am yet to see a single font from any of the participants. Correct
me, if I am wrong.
 
Regards,
Pavanaja

---------------------------------------------------------

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja
CEO, Vishva Kannada Softech
 <http://www.vishvakannada.com/> http://www.vishvakannada.com/
91-80-23309693, 91-9341980400
Think Globally, Act locally


> -----Original Message-----
> From: kannada-bounces at sharma-home.net
> [ <mailto:kannada-bounces at sharma-home.net>
mailto:kannada-bounces at sharma-home.net] On Behalf Of Arun Sharma
> Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 12:27 AM
> To: Kannada computing list
> Subject: Re: [Kannada] Kannada on Fedora Core 3
>
> On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 04:07:23PM +0530, H P Nadig wrote:
> > Kiran B.R. wrote:
> >
> > >H.P,
> > >
> > >Thanks. I actually discovered that Kannada support is
> pretty advanced
> > >(?!) in FC3 already.
> > >
> > lol. is this sarcasm? The Kannada support ain't *advanced*, but is
> > *just
> > enough* for people to switch over to Linux. Now, if somehow
> language
> > packs can be brought up, it'd be a bit more better.
>
> Having lived abroad for quite a few years now, I might be out
> of touch with reality a little bit. But I'm yet to meet
> someone who's dying to see kannada stuff under the File menu.
>
> Most people want an easy way to read web pages and after
> they've had some practice typing (people seem to prefer
> phonetic keyboards - I prefer inscript), they'll probably
> want to search and may be type an email or two.
>
> Sorry if I seem to be throwing cold water on some of your
> enthusiasm, but translating every open source app to kannada
> doesn't seem to be the need of the hour, from my reading of
> what people want (ok - I got laughed at as a guy who has too
> much free time in a party when I mentioned my kannada activities).
>
> In my opinion, the single most important barrier to open
> source adoption on the desktop is the font rendering engine,
> which frankly sucks compared to the one from Microsoft/Apple,
> inspite of all the advances in recent years. So my suggestion
> is - if you have some free time, hack the freetype engine to
> make it render better and design some free fonts that look as
> good as the ones from the above companies.
>
> Obviously, not everyone has the time/skill to do the above.
> So what should the rest of us, the mere mortals do? A simple
> shell command to take transliterated kannada text and spit
> out UTF-8 would be a great tool. Feel free to humiliate me
> for my ignorance if such a tool already exists and widely known.
>
>       -Arun
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