Interview with Sayamindu for Newsletter1
From IndLinux
sdg/Sayamindu DasGupta is one of the more recognised names on the Indic Localisation scene. As the co-lead of the Ankur Bangla Project at www.bengalinux.org, he is one of the hackers who are keen on pushing the envelope. In an interview with Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay (sankarshan at softhome dot net), Sayamindu (unmadindu at bengalinux dot org) talks about the Bangla L10n.
SM. Why did you join up Ankur ?
SDG. The ideal answer would be somewhat like - ..maybe because I am crazy ! Seriously speaking, during June-July 2002, I was quite excited to see GNOME supporting languages like Chinese, Spanish, etc. I made some queries, and found out that the first sep to a Bangla enabled GNOME would be to make fonts. I did not know anything about creating fonts, so while looking for info, I came across Taneem Ahmed, who was getting together all the resources related to Bangla & Free Software at Bengalinux.org. I joined him in his effort, and finally in January 2003, Bengalinux became Ankur.
SM. What is the release management protocol for the project ?
SDG. The process is quite informal. When a developer decides to release a package, (s)he (yes we are an equal opportunities effort !) usually sends in the tarball to me. If required, I make a RPM file, and upload the tarball and the RPM to our download servers, and make the announcements at the various websites and mailing lists. Regarding translations, we try to keep in sync with the release schedule of the project concerned. For example, we maintain a 6 month cycle for our GNOME translations, with translation and pofile release activities reaching a peak during March/September each year.
SM. Where is the project headed ?
SDG. Currently, KDE translation is a major focus area. Deepayan Sarkar is working on a early version of an open source Indic language OCR package. Also, we are trying to Bangla enable the various GNOME based accessibility software. For example, we have already come up with a training text for Dasher, and currently, we are conducting a study on Bangla character occurence frequency for localizing Gok - the GNOME On Screen Keyboard. The preliminary results of the study will be published very soon in our wiki. Plans are also on for a Bangla screen reader (based on Gopernicus) - but that would involve the creation of a Bangla Text to Speech Engine, and I am not sure whether we have the required resources for that at this moment. We are also adding to and enriching the content base of the Localised Low Cost Computing effort (L2C2) of Ankur.
SM. Where do you see Ankur from a long term perspective ? ie the vision and the goal
SDG. Our two major aims at this stage are
1. Get out of the box Bangla support for every major distro that is out there. Bangla should just work for user Suresh Das and Haridasi Pal.
2. Go beyond the Live CD, and create a full fledged distribution, specially customised and tailored for the Bengali user with considerable value addition.
SM. How many volunteers ? What are the major hassles ?
SDG. Volunteers: We have around 15 volunteers working on the various projects. The number of core developers is around 7-8. Hassles: Getting more volunteers. We started out with around 12 volunteers, and the increase in the number of volunteers have not been satisfactory. Moreover, bandwidth/connectivity remains a major problem. For example, one of our volunteers, Dr. Anirban Mitra can connect to the internet for only once a week. Since Ankur is totally a internet based project, this is a major bottleneck. I am one of the lucky ones, with a 24 hr 128 kbps connection, but I too have a bandwidth cap of 500 MB per month, which makes things really difficult for releasing Live CD ISO images and downloading large files (for instance OpenOffice.org source). Hardware resources is also another problem - compiling stuff like Mozilla/OpenOffice.org can take really long, and doing this stuff on our regular production machines really hampers work.
SM. Current Project status?
SDG. With GNOME 2.6, Bangla will officially get a "supported language" status. Currently, 84 percent of the core GNOME Desktop is translated into Bangla. KDE translation is progressing at a steady pace, and the stats currently stand at around 35 %. The Online Archive of Bangla Literary Works is expanding nicely, and the Indic OCR, once developed should speed up things in this area. The West Bengal Bangla Academy has recently released new recommendations on the Bengali script (simplifying some conjunct shapes and stuff like that), and the Bangladesh Bangla Academy also had release similar recommendations sometime back. We are currently developing an Open Type font which conforms to these recommendations.
SM. How about some information on the recognition obtained by Ankur ?
SDG. It is an interesting phenomenon that the initial recognition and appreciation for the Ankur Bangla Project came from outside India. For example, the recent issue of Linux Magazine has a write-up on the project in the World News section. We are also one of the 3 L10n efforts proposed to be highlighted in IBM Linux Redbook 2004. The L2C2 package suitably customised is undergoing pilot tests at 19 community centres in UK, 2 in US and 1 in Australia. In India, Linux For You had a breaking news section on this project and we are in talks with the Govt of WB to implement on a pilot level the project at the Public Access Points of the G2C initiative. By the way, we are at www.bengalinux.org
