[4100] in linux-announce channel archive
Linux-Announce Digest #392
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Digestifier)
Fri Apr 25 07:13:46 2003
From: Digestifier <Linux-Announce-Request@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>
To: Linux-Announce@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu
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Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 07:13:04 EDT
Linux-Announce Digest #392, Volume #4 Fri, 25 Apr 2003 07:13:04 EDT
Contents:
LINKS: GNU/Linux quotes... from the Indian press ("Frederick Noronha (FN)")
FEATURE: VERN VERSION (BusinessToday, March 16, 2003 www.business-today.com) ("Frederick Noronha (FN)")
Linux and MIDI (Matt Corkum)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <fred@bytesforall.org>
Subject: LINKS: GNU/Linux quotes... from the Indian press
Date: 24 Apr 2003 21:00:05 GMT
BUSINESSES are also starting to use [GNU]Linux
more freely due to the tremendous savings they can
make. Computers still cost Rs 25,000 or so -- and
almost a similar amount goes into the software.
When a business needs to buy a lot of computers,
that amounts to staggering costs.
-- Mala Bhargava, BusinessWorld (India)
March 3, 2003
GUESS WHICH Indian company has bagged the biggest export
order in the telecom sector? Midas Communications, a
seven-year-old R&D company based in Chennai, focussing on
rural telephony, has just picked up a $12-million
(around Rs 60 crore) order from Egypt. It will install
200,000 telephone lines based on the corDect wireless in
local loop (WLL) technology that it has developed in
partnership with the Tenet grouup, spearheaded by IIT-
Chennai professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala. -- M Anand in
BusinessWorld (India) March 10, 2003. (Prof Jhunjhunwala
has long focussed his attention around GNU/Linux)
WITH COMPANIES such as HP, Microsoft, Red Hat,
NIIT and Reliance putting serious money into
it, the vernacular computing market in India
looks set to bloom in 2003.... The Simputer
has a GNU/Linux embedded system with local
language support... Red Hat will launch a
Hindi-enabled 9.1 version (Linux) in the next
six months.... NCST IndiX Project will enable
Hindi and other Indian languages on GNU/Linux
systems. IndLinux (offers) support for Hindi
on Gnome. Swathanthra Malayala Computing
Project (offers) support for Malayalam on
Gnome. IIT Madras (is working on) support for
Tamil on GNU/Linux system. -- Report by
Priya Srinivasan, spanning four pages,
Business Today (India), March 16, 2003.
CIRCULATED VIA
--
=========================================================================
Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net
Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org
http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com
http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks
=========================================================================
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------------------------------
From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <fred@bytesforall.org>
Subject: FEATURE: VERN VERSION (BusinessToday, March 16, 2003 www.business-today.com)
Date: 24 Apr 2003 21:00:09 GMT
V E R N V E R S I O N
With companies such as HP, Microsoft, Red Hat, NIIT, and Reliance putting
serious money into it, the vernacular computing market in India tooks set
to bloom in 2003.
BY PRIYA SRINIVASAN
www.business-today.com
AS REVOLUTIONS GO, THIS IS A QUIET ONE. IT HAS ITS BEGINNINGS IN hundreds
of villages such as Madantusi in Uttar Pradesh, where children exposed to
computers and the Net have their own unique lexicon -- 'dumroo' (drum in
Hindi) for the hourglass icon and 'sui' (needle) for the cursor. Sify and
Rediff, portals with local language sites and Hindi-site Webduniya (its
user base has almost trebled from 426,310 to 12,44,493 since 2000) are
card-carrying members. And converts to the cause include the likes of HP,
Microsoft, Red Hat, Reliance, C-DAC, and Mumbai-based start-up Netcore
Solutions.
Welcome to the great Indian language computing offensive.
Efforts to take computing to the masses are as old as computing itself,
but it is the Internet -- and the hundreds of web-based applications
following in its wake -- that has endowed them with a sense of relevance
and purpose.
The most viable manifestation of this is content. "The Internet is a
self-organising system," says Sugata Mitra, the Chief Scientist at
computer education firm NIIT. Madantusi is one of the 100-odd villages
covered under its Minimally Invasive Education initiative.
"As content providers see enough people to cater to, they begin to cater
to them; what we are seeing now is the beginning of the movement." And
with the Net breaking the ice with a hitherto computer-shy audience,
companies are queued up in the wings with their own vern versions.
THE ENGINE INSIDE
Software is an obvious gambit. By 2003-end Microsoft with launch Hindi
versions of Windows XP and Office 11. Around the same time, if not
earlier, Red Hat will be out with a Hindi-enabled version 9.1 (built
around Linux).
Both are priced offerings, but Red Hat's software can, unlike Microsoft's,
be copied to several machines. After all, Red Hat is an advocate of the
Free Software, or the Open Source Software movement. Several hundred
developers who swear by Open Source are working towards making the layers
that go over the operating system support local languages.
Part of the umbrella GNU (a recursive acronym that stands for GNU's Not
Unix) system this includes the GNOME layer (GNU Network Object Model
Environment), a sort of Windows-like desktop for non-Windows environment
and the Graphical User Interface (GUI).
PHOTO: Rajesh Jain, managing director, Netcore
Solutions. This former Indiaworld man will soon launch
a PC branded Emergic Freedom that will be enabled
in Hindi -- from Operating System to Graphical
User Interface. Prices will start as low as Rs 5000.
Linux is one kernel around which GNU systems are built -- the Free
Software Foundation has its own kernel of choice, HURD -- and most local
language experiments use it.
"We see a definite demand for localisation and from a Linux standpoint, a
lot of work is happening since anyone can take on this work," says Javed
Tapia, Director, Red Hat India, referring to the fact that any developer
is free to participate in the movement to provide local language support
on the GNU/Linux system.
The result is a rash of activity among developer communities (and
companies) across the country.
"GNU systems are becoming very popular at both the government and
enterprise level -- it's not just about cost, the technology helps us to
share, distribute and improve; that these systems are economical is
incidental," says Nagarjuna G., Director, Free Software Foundation of
India and a scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,
Mumbai.
Several governments (and arms of governments), non-governmental
organisations and environmental institutions are currently working on Open
Source support for languages. Microsoft's reaction to a body of work that
could change the face of the market is predictable.
"Drill down a little on the Open Source work and you will find a
reinvention of the wheel," says Raveesh Gupta, Program Manager,
Localisation, Microsoft India. "Why replicate all the work on another
platform?"
The real issue, according to Gupta, isn't about who is doing what, but
about adopting a common standard for application development. The man
isn't far off the mark -- this is the refrain of anyone involved in
creating language software.
The problem is that developers of Indian language software have been
following proprietary standards. That means data stored in one software
cannot be transferred to another, at least not without expending time and
money. That goes against the cross-platform philosophy that resides at the
heart of computing today and has raised the hackles of anyone involved
with local language computing development.
"It is a big issue. Without some agreed-upon standard, even simple things
we have come to expect from most applications, like cut-and-paste, are not
possible," says San Francisco-based Tapan Parikh, the founder of EkGaon, a
company that develops Indian language websites and applications.
There is a solution -- the adoption of the Unicode standard for all Indian
languages.
For those who came in late, Unicode is a standard that represents
characters as integers. The widely used ASCII (American Standard Code for
Information Exchange) code uses 7 bits for each character; Unicode does
16. Ergo, it can represent some 65,000 unique characters, making it just
the thing for a multi-language pan-Indian software.
The problem is that developer groups working on some Indian languages feel
Unicode does not support some fundamental characters. The government has
now stepped in and is trying to resolve the issue.
"We are in the midst of a trial or suggested version of Unicode. There is
no controversy, but some southern languages need more numbers of letters
and combinations, they need more space. Also there are more
'samyuktaksharas' (combined letters) in these languages," says P.K.
Chaturvedi, Director, Ministry of Information Technology.
Still, Unicode won't solve a bigger problem threatening the spread of
langauge computing -- access.
WHY LANGUAGE MAKES SENSE
It's simply a matter of numbers
Sify's page views on language portals
TAMIL Dec 2000 5,00,000
Jan 2003 8,00,000
TELUGU Dec 2000 1,80,000
Jan 2003 3,50,000
MALAYALAM Dec 2000 1,00,000
Jan 2003 3,00,000
HINDI Dec 2000 1,00,000
Jan 2003 1,25,000
WHERE'S THE CHASSIS?
Access has long been a hurdle to the spread of computing in India. Some
analysts reckon PCs will have to cost a seventh what they do now before
computing can reach the masses.
That's where Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions comes in.
The company, promoted by Rajesh Jain -- the same lucky man who sold
Indiaworld to Satyam for close to Rs 5000 million -- has an altogether
different game plan to take access to the masses. "We are the topmost
layer of the pyramid as far as PC and Net penetration go with just about
10 million Net users and 2 million PC owners," says Jain.
"The next three years will be about reaching the 100 million mark for Net
users and how are we going to do it? The approach has to be bottom up --
its about making technology accessible to people and language is a big
component of that."
Jain is currently in the process of taking his desktop PC, branded Emergic
Freedom, to the market.
One model of the PC that will be enabled in Hindi (right from the OS to
the Graphical User Interface) will be priced as low as Rs 5000. How does
Netcore plan to do it? For starters, the PC will run totally on Open
Source software -- that cuts out licence fees. Then, based on Jain's
belief that most users do not really want hard disks, but simple access
devices that can be connected to a network, Emergic Freedom will be a
network PC of sorts (Netcore is in discussion with cable operators and
other possible partners to create a server-centric computing environment).
And, finally, the company will cannibalise old boxes or discarded PCs to
really drive down the price.
Only time will tell whether Jain's gamble works, but the urgent need to
drive down PC prices dramatically to catch the next wave of users is
indisputable.
In fat, HP Labs India has internalised the need enough to actually call
one of its language systems divisions 'Affordable Access Devices". HP Labs
India is currently working on developing an access device called
Scriptmail where mail can actually be written by hand and then, through a
simple interface, carried on the Internet.
Another interesting project at HP Labs India is the Directed Dialogue
System whereby users can actually call out questions into phones and have
answers called out to them from existing databases, thanks to an online
voice-enabled Indian language system.
"There are five times as many telephone users in India as Net users and
this is a system which will make use of that existing base," explain
Srinivasan Ramani, Research Director, HP Labs India.
IT's FREE
Free software for language computing -- a WIP list
o NCST IndiX Project: This will enable Hindi and other
Indian languages on GNU/Linux systems
o IndLinux: Support for Hindi on GNOME
o Swathanthra Malayalam Computing Project: Support
for Malayalam on GNOME
o IIT Madras: Support for Tamil on GNU/Linux system.
Government-run C-DAC is also trying its hand at manufacturing and selling
a language-enabled device on a commercial scale. The Pocket Translator,
originally developed for tourists, is now being Internet-enabled and the
organisation is approaching manufacturers with a view to launch the
product this year, says R.K.Arora, Executive Director, C-DAC.
>From the myriad efforts underway to kick-start language computing, it is
evident that India is at the threshold of a vern wave. One trigger could
be all it takes to create a commercially significant user base. That could
be Netcore's PC, a new access device, or anything else.
This is a revolution waiting to happen. (###)
CIRCULATE IN PUBLIC INTEREST BY:
--
=========================================================================
Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net
Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org
http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com
http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks
=========================================================================
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------------------------------
From: fadetowhite@hotmail.com (Matt Corkum)
Subject: Linux and MIDI
Date: 25 Apr 2003 00:40:01 GMT
I was wondering if anyone knows of any software
that will
(a) run on Linux, and
(b) will analyse a MIDI stream; that is, being fed MIDI data, will
output what it thinks it saw. What I have in mind is fairly
simple, something like
Key X pressed with velocity Y at time T
Key Z pressed with velocity Q at time T'
Key X released at time T''
and so on.
Please e-mail fadetowhite@hotmail.com
Thanks very much
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