Fwd: IUC 37 - only a week away

IUC 37 is in progress. Many will be attending from these lists:

http://www.unicodeconference.**org/e/IUC37-2WEEK-10-09-13.htm<http://www.unicodeconference.org/e/IUC37-2WEEK-10-09-13.htm>

Happy IUC! Can the keynote address by Alolita Sharma be put on the web,
e.g., in youtube, so many Wiki enthusiasts in India watch her talk?

India is a country where many scripts, each script representing 50+
million speakers, are in use and have a WIki also. Typically, many Wiki
articles are only few lines tho'. There is very little content in Indian
scripts, at least as yet:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-24279606

"Search for Google always been about all languages. Indian languages
present special challenges, because there is very little content in these
languages. So the biggest thing that can be done is the creation of more
content."

Govt. of India is declaring many languages as classical languages - first
was Tamil in 2004, followed by Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, more recently
Malayalam, then Oriya. More will be added in time. On November 1, Kerala
state in India is celebrating Malayalam as a classical language of India
(per GoI statement),
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/november-1-is-classical-language-day/article5225518.ece

While major Indian scripts now have Unicode encoding, and web presence,
hope in the current decade minor scripts of India get not only Unicode
chart, but also display engines so users can write, start wiki-s in these
scripts also. For example, Brahmi has a chart, but not in the web. If given
a display engine, Indians and academics in the West and India can discuss
both Aryan and Dravidian (eg., Sanskrit and Tamil resp.) in Brahmi script.
Also, the Grantha script, used for writing Sanskrit and Tamil sacred texts
needs support. Especially because Tamil script is only for Tamil language,
and is not capable of writing other Indian classical languages such as
Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi or Sanskrit. A Wiki using Grantha script to write
these languages can be started if Microsoft, Google, Apple, Adobe, ... give
support for the minor scripts of India. At least a selection of scripts -
Brahmi, Grantha, Kaithi - to begin with. Hope a start is made in the coming
years by Unicode member companies - major IT corp.s MS, Google, Apple,
support Brahmi, Grantha, ... to be added to the existing scripts' of India
in the web. Once a start is made, over the years, Brahmi, Grantha scripts
will be fully able to write both language families - Aryan and Dravidian -
in the Indian language sphere in the Web.

N. Ganesan

http://nganesan.blogspot.com
Received on Tue Oct 22 2013 - 09:33:01 CDT