Only Aspell, no space for others…

It seems that our work on our own spell checker doesnot have any importance other than learning. Aspell is light years ahead of us.There are ispell, myspell also. But we learned a lot about the approximate string comparison, fast search on a big wordlist, candidate list generation etc.. Gora Mohanty gave valuable insights to me on Aspell and how to create the Aspell word list for Malayalam.But still problems on compound words of malayalam.. “Sandhi & Samasam” and the infinite number of words that can be created by that in malayalam is a big hurdle for us..
Can we create a dictionary with all those words?
Can we code that large set of rules?!!
Wait and See 😉

A myth called the Indian programmer

“Most software professionals in India are not programmers, they are mere coders,”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Sunday_Specials/Review/A_myth_called_the_Indian_programmer/articleshow/msid-1633868,curpg-1.cms

I completely agree with this article. We should make ourself different from others.
Software engineers are becoming dump users. Assemblers of pieces of code that even high school students can do. Are we using anything that we studied in our Computer Science courses in the engineering college?
Are we showing any creativity in this field? (There are exemptions, I agree, but in general)
Read http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Challenges also…

Spell checker and Late night coding..

It was a wonderful week end. Myself and Benzi were working on the spell checker for Malayalam. In April we had done lot of research on this. We did the coding for the dictionary representation in the Binary Retrieval tree (TRIE). Saturday night we did the candidate list generation coding. It is a wonderful experience to code in the late night – one laptop and two persons to code!!!. Every thing worked fine. When we finished the coding, we realized that the application can be tuned to a universal(?) spell checker. So sunday we tested it using a 3 lakh english words.. Worked fine!!. We compared the spelling options generated with aspell. Ours was giving more options since our dictionary is bigger than aspell’s.
We want it to be called as bspell :-). But qns….
Why bspell? what is the extra/less features that bspell has compared to aspell
how to make it language independent?
How to rank the spelling suggestions?
How to make it work with Office suits/Editors?
…
Answer is “study Aspell”

Plus meet May 2007 at Tippus Fort , Palakkad

Anivar, Praveen, Hiran, Sujith and myself reached the fort at 10.15 AM. Anivar, Praveen, Hiran and Sujith were wearing T-Shirts with Debian Logo.
Riyas has reached already.Meeting started at 11 AM.
Around 20 members participated in the meeting. Meeting place was FREE and OPEN as you have seen in the pictures.
We sat under the tree in the form of a ring. Students from MES kuttippuram, GEC Sreekrishnapuram and GEC Thrissur participated.
First item was introduction. Every body introduced themself, distros used/using etc.
Hiran introduced Riyaz and himself. Meanwhile Riyaz started burning Debian DVDs.
Hiran gave an introduction to Plus to the participants.
Praveen explained the Debian, apt, its difference between Ubuntu, its release cycle etc. The discussion on Freedom concerns and Ubuntu reached in the discussion of
GPL version 3.We discussed the new features of GPLv3: Internationalized terms in the GPLv3, DRM, Microsoft Novell Deal,GPL violation etc.
We watched the “Truth Happens” video.
Participants asked questions about Mp3 patent, LGPL, BSD, Apache license etc.

Praveen has bought chocolates from US. GSOC participants sponsored the lunch for all.

After lunch break, we discussed the future programs of PLUS. We decided to increase the participation of students from engg and arts colleges in Palakkad
GSOC mentors/students updated the status of the projects.
Anivar introduced SMC to the participants.
Praveen explained the translation process.

Photos:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/santhosh00/Plus_May_07
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/hiran.v/Plus_may

Free software Alternatives or replacements

What will be the impact of a Discussion on a mailing list regarding
freedom concerns.

See the Old thread on PLUS
http://lists.sarovar.org/pipermail/plus-discuss/2007-January/000628.html
& Old gnu Page
http://web.archive.org/web/20060516072757/http://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.html

If community is vigilant about Freedom lets see what happens
http://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.html

The Word “Free software Alternatives” changed with “Free software
replacements”

Debian Installer Etch Release Candidate 2 released

The Debian Installer team is proud to announce the second release
candidate (RC2) of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux Etch. Unless
release critical issues are discovered, this will be the version of
the installer that will be included in the release of Etch.

There are no real major changes in this release, but we have been able
to use the time since RC1 to fix quite a few important and minor
issues.
…

* The following additional languages are now supported: Belarusian,
Kurdish; and only in the graphical installer: Georgian, Malayalam.

http://times.debian.net/1094-Debian-Installer-Etch-Release-Candidate-2-released

Proud to be part of debian installer malayalam translation team..