......................FYI......................
100% tamil computer
When will our parents and our tamil friends in tamilnadu see a 100%
tamil computer. Without even a slightest knowledge of English, can i
ever use a Computer?
Yes friends, that day has come. Now we can use a computer without
knowing a word in English. These are the things that you can do with a
tamil computer even if you only know tamil.
currently,
1.you can send and receive e-mails in Tamil.
2.Browse internet in Tamil.
3.Write documents in tamil.Create documents for writing letters, books
and all other purposes.
4.Print documents in Tamil.
5.Maintain accounts for our family/shops in tamil.
6.create nice presentations in Tamil.
7.create and Share tamil documents with people who do not have tamil.
8.We can listen to music(mp3 songs)
9.We can chat/talk using computer with friends using tamil.
10.configure our own computer to connect to internet
11.Add/remove software
12.Completely configure your computer using friendly wizards.
Do you really think all these are possible? What should i do to all
these things in tamil? How much does this cost?
Yes, friends all these things are possible. And this is possible
today. And this is possible in mandrake-Linux. mandrake9.0 supports
tamil 100% out of the box. Pls. go here to see some nice pictures of
mandrake9.0
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilinix/files/misc
/screenshots/Mandrake/
If you're in hurry, pls. refer this document on how to get this
mandrake9.0 for yourself
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilinix/files/FAQ.pdf ;
for others with some time to spare for tamil
mandrake-Linux?
pls. allow me to explain what is linux.
Linux is another operating system like windows95/98/2000/XP. The good
thing about inux is it is easy to use and extremely reliable and
powerfull. linux is free to use & it is legal to share with your
friends and is ideally suited for people like us in India. This comes
bundled with all the necessary software for doing all the twelve
things given above. No need to buy any extra software,
Come on. How come your Linux is powerful and still free? legal to
share?
Are you joking?
No my friends, i'm not joking. distribution. This is developed by
thousands of volunteers around the world. This is possible because
linux is an open source software. Yes, in open source software people
share their source code, to enable others to find out problems and
improve it based on their own needs/ideas. This is how, some great
tamil people have worked hard in the past few years to bring tamil to
linux. Pls. go here to get more details behing opensource,
http://www.opensource.org ;
Linux is also a free software, free as in freedom and not free as in
free lunch. This free software was developed as a protest again
proprietery software in 1974 and you can go here to get more details.
http://www.gnu.org ;
Linux is distributed by many companies, and one such popular and
easy-to-use distribution that is focussed on new computer users is
Mandrake-Linux.
mandrake-linux is a french company who focus on international users,
people like tamils, arabs. malay, chineese etc.. An extremely helpful
person named Pablo Saratxaga has been driving this and has taken a
lead to support Tamil In Mandrake-Linux. Tamil enthusiasts should be
really thankful this friend.
Initially a tamil enthusiast named Sivakumar Shanmugasundaram started
translating KDE, one of the first graphical desktop environments for
linux. Later he was joined by people like Venkataramanan, Vasee,
Gomathi . Now, Vasee is actively supporting KDE. In addition Vasee has
modified a lot of open soucrce software to support tamil including
tamil keyboard. Without him, tamil would have never reached this stage
within this short time. D. Sivaraj is another great enthusiast and
kind person who developed console support and always helped newbies to
tamil linux like me in my early days.
Dinesh has been working on the Gnome desktop environment and he also
has developed tamil keyboard for Gnome.
Recently thanks to magnanimous offer of Sinnathurai Srivas, a really
brilliant selfless individual, Tamil got unrestricted free fonts. He
gave away his Avarangal fonts for e-kalappai, windows based tamil
software. He readily consented to give his font for linux. Without his
beautiful font we can never get Tamil support in Linux.
with this tamil becomes the first Indian language to be supported 100%
out of the box in an operating system. A user who knows only tamil can
start using computer thanks to mandrake9.0. Now onwards English is
not a pre-requisite for tamils to use computer. presently for
installing the operating system one needs english language.
mandrake9.0 uses TSCII. A lot of people joined in to develop tscii,
the tamil computer standard . This is widely used around the world by
tamils. In windwos through e-kalappai anyone can read/write Tamil.
Pls. go here for details on TSCII. http://www.tamil.net/tscii ;
Everhing you write and send in mandrake9.0 can be read in windows
using e-kalappai. for detals on e-kalappai...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/e-Uthavi/files/ekalappai.htm ;
how can i help?
1. Help distribute mandrake-linux to your friends. People who know
only tamil will definitely appreciate your help.
2.Help the translation of KDE, Gnome, Openoffice, mozilla.. a lot of
people are required to help vasee & Dinesh. This doesn't require any
technical knowledge. A simple English and Tamil knwoledge will do. If
i can do this, definitely you can do.
3.Contribute more tamil fonts if you're font developer.
4.Spread the message as much as possible as Tamil should leapfrog to
the newage. People like Kalyanasundaram have brought a lot of
literature to computer. We should read them and benefit from them.
4. We should use computer for our day today life to make our life
better and tamilnadu a prosperous place.
-----------------------------------------------
sorry for the rather long post.
Cheers.,
Prabu
__________________________________________________
Yahoo! - We Remember
9-11: A tribute to the more than 3,000 lives lost
http://dir.remember.yahoo.com/tribute
--
cheers../elan
visit www.tamil.net for tamil fonts
