Indic

സ്വതന്ത്ര പ്രവര്‍ത്തകസംവിധാനങ്ങള്‍ക്കായി തയ്യാറാക്കിയ glibc (Gnu C Library ) അകാരാദിക്രമത്തിന്റെ(Collation) വിശദവിവരങ്ങള്‍ താഴെക്കൊടുക്കുന്നു. അഭിപ്രായങ്ങള്‍ അറിയിക്കുക. താഴെപ്പറയുന്ന നിയമങ്ങളുടെ അടിസ്ഥാനത്തിലാണു് മലയാളം അകാരാദിക്രമം തയ്യാറാക്കിയിരിക്കുന്നതു്. അക്ഷരമാലാക്രമം പിന്തുടരുക. അനുസ്വാരം മയുടെ സ്വരസാന്നിദ്ധ്യമില്ലാത്ത രൂപമായി പരിഗണിച്ചു് മയുടെ തൊട്ടുമുന്നില്‍ ക്രമീകരിയ്ക്കുക. പംപ < പമ്പ എന്ന പോലെ . ഓരോ വ്യഞ്ജനവും അതിന്റെ സ്വരസാന്നിദ്ധ്യമില്ലാത്ത രൂപത്തിന്റെ കൂടെ അകാരം ഉള്ള രൂപമായി കണക്കാക്കുക. അതായതു് ത എന്നതു് ത് എന്ന സ്വരസാന്നിദ്ധ്യമില്ലാത്ത വ്യഞ്ജനത്തിന്റെ കൂടെ അകാരം ഉള്ള രൂപമാണു്. ത = ത് + അ . താ = ത് + ആ എന്നിങ്ങനെ. ഇതില്‍ നിന്നും ത് < ത എന്നു വ്യക്തമാകുന്നു. അതുകൊണ്ടു് ത എന്നതു് ത് കഴിഞ്ഞേ വരൂ. അത് < അതല്ല < അതാണു്. അതേസമയം അത്ഭുതം > അതഭ. കൂട്ടക്ഷരങ്ങള്‍ അതിലെ ആദ്യത്തെ അക്ഷരത്തില്‍ സ്വരചിഹങ്ങള്‍ ചേര്‍ന്ന രൂപങ്ങളെല്ലാം കഴിഞ്ഞേ വരൂ. ത്ഭ = ത + ് + ഭ + ് + അ തഭ = ത + ് + അ + ഭ + ് + അ ആദ്യത്തെ രണ്ടക്ഷരങ്ങള്‍ തുല്യമായതുകൊണ്ടു്, ഇതിനെ നമുക്കു് ഭ + ് + അ അ + ഭ + ് + അ എന്നെഴുതാം. ഭ > അ ആണല്ലോ. അതുകൊണ്ടു് അത്ഭുതം എന്നതു് അതഭ എന്നതിനു ശേഷമേ വരൂ. ...

I ported all of the Matrix screensavers with Indian language glyphs to KDE4. For details about the screensavers please read: Hacking the GLMatrix screensaver Screensavers in your language Download the binary packages: Deb package, and RPM package There are 6 screensavers in that package, for Malayalam, Hindi, Oriya , Bengali, Tamil and Gujarati. After installation, goto KDE system settings->Desktop->Screensaver and select any of this. Screenshots(click to get the image in original size): ...

In my last blogpost I explained hyphenation of Indian language text in openoffice. In this blogpost I will explain how hyphenation can be done in webpages. As I explained importance of hyphenation come into picture when we justify the text. The length of the lines are controlled by the parent tags…. Unicode had defined a special character called soft hyphen for hyphenation denoted by ­ . In HTML, the plain hy­phen is rep­re­sent­ed by the “-” char­ac­ter (- or-). The soft hy­phen is rep­re­sent­ed by the char­ac­ter en­ti­ty ref­er­ence ­ (­ or ­) ...

What is Hiphenation? Hyphenation is the process inserting hyphens in between the syllables of a word so that when the text is justified, maximum space is utilized. Hiphenation is an important feature that DTP softwares provide. For Indian languages there is no good DTP softwares available. XeTex is the only choice to work with unicode and professional quality page layout. But xetex and DTP are not exactly same. Inkscape can be used as temporary solution. But only for small scale works. There is a project going on to add Harfbuzz backend to Scribus, the freedomware DTP package. ...

A new version of Dhvani -The Indian Language Text to Speech System is available now. The new version comes with the following improvements/features Support for 11 languages- Hindi, Panjabi, Gujarati, Marati, Bengali, Oriya, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil , Malayalam and Pashto(Afganistan) Pitch and Tempo modification for speech Direct ogg-vorbis speech output and optional wav output format C/C++ APIs for applications to use dhvani as a shared library. Generic driver for Speech-dispatcher and Integration to Orca through speech dispatcher Python binding through speech dispatcher Improved language detection algorithm Dhvani documentation is available here. ...

A few weeks back there was a discussion on #indlinux IRC channel about automatic language detection. The idea is, spellcheckers or any language tools should not ask the users to select a language. Instead, they should detect the language automatically. The idea is not new. There is a KDE bug hereand Ubuntu has this as an brainstorm idea. It seems M$ word already have this. A sample use case can be this: “While preparing a document in Openoffice, I want to write in English as well as in Hindi. For doing spellcheck, I need to manually change the language rather than the application detect it automatically” ...

While working with Unicode text, it is often required to get the Unicode code points of text for debugging. Using python, it is very easy to get the unicode codepoints of the text. Following examples illustrates it. ` “സന്തോഷ്”.decode(“utf-8”) u’\u0d38\u0d28\u0d4d\u0d24\u0d4b\u0d37\u0d4d’ ` or ` str=u"സന്തോഷ്" print repr(str) u’\u0d38\u0d28\u0d4d\u0d24\u0d4b\u0d37\u0d4d’ ` Well, But we need to take python console and type/paste the text etc..How can we make it more easy? What if pressing F12 key after selecting some text gives the codepoints? ...

I had written a blog post about hacking the glmatrix screensaver with the glyphs of our languages. Now I have those screensavers in the following languages: Hindi : Deb Package , RPM Gujarati : Deb Package , RPM Bengali : Deb Package , RPM Oriya: Deb Package , RPM Tamil : Deb Package , RPM Malayalam: Deb Package , RPM Try it and enjoy !! ps: I used the default fonts of Fedora 9 for these. If you have any specific font to be used please let me know. I used Dyuthi calligraphic font for Malayalam.

Swanalekha is an Input method originally designed for Malayalam. It is works with scim. as well as m17n. The input method scheme is transliteration based and it has a unique feature of candidate list menu(which I will explain shortly). Now I have extended it to 10 other Indian languages. Before explaining how swanalekha is different from other phonetic/transliteration based input methods, let me explain some of the characteristics of transliteration. Transliteration based input methods were following a strict one to one mapping from english letters to another Indian language. For eg: The ka=क ,pa = प , ti = टि etc.. when you write bharath, you will easily transliterate it to hindi as भारत. But for a rule based transliteration system it is भरत unless the english is bhaarath. Some times it may be Bhaarat too.. See another example: Kartik. it should be transliterated to കാര്‍ത്തിക് in Malayalam. So some people write it as Karthik, and some others write it as karthick too. All these are based on personal preferences. But when it use transliteration based input methods, people find difficulty with using a strict rule based writing method. There they have to write kaa for കാ or કા or கா or কা. Users like to get what they mean without the difficulty following the strict rules of transliteration. In an Intelligent transliteration based system when somebody write linux they should be able to map it to लिनक्स . Some times a choice to select लैनक्स is also preferable. This is what google transliteration does. No rules, no learning.. just type in english… ...

Some Notes on Canonical Equivalence in Unicode: Unicode defines canonical equivalence as follows: From UAX #15 Canonical Equivalence This section describes the relationship of normalization to respecting (or preserving) canonical equivalence. A process (or function) respects canonical equivalence when canonical-equivalent inputs always produce canonical-equivalent outputs. For a function that transforms one string into another, this may also be called preserving canonical equivalence. There are a number of important aspects to this concept: ...