From: Donald Z. Osborn (dzo@bisharat.net)
Date: Sun Nov 14 2004 - 10:42:14 CST
Doug, Thanks for the attention and no problem about the remarks re who's aware
of what. It's legitimate to wonder in either direction since there are such
problems with information flows in Africa and among those elsewhere working
with/for people there. My earliest lesson in this was as a Peace Corps
volunteer working with an animal traction project (plowing with oxen, for those
not up with the technology) in Togo a quarter century ago. Togo is a very small
country - and a nice one too - that you can drive across in about an hour where
the roads permit and drive the length of in an easy day - but there were
apparently 5 animal traction projects there with little mutual contact or
communication and at least one major unnecessary duplication of efforts
(regarding carts) between the two largest projects.
In this case of Yoruba keyboards, happily, we are aware of the efforts of Tunde
and ALT-I, but those have not been brought into public discussion as much as
they might be (as far as I'm aware). Their effort was given an award by IICD
and featured in a report in i-Connect Africa (July 2003 -
http://www.uneca.org/aisi/IConnectAfrica/v1n5.htm ) which was also posted to
A12n-forum at
http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/a12n-forum/msg00024.html .
And I am sure that Tunde and ALT-I are aware of other efforts such as those
brought together on the A12n keyboard projects page -
http://www.bisharat.net/A12N/Projects/ - notably by Andrew Cunningham (I should
mention that these are independent efforts listed on these pages, undertaken
many of them with discussion on A12n-collaboration or offline). Yoruba keyboard
efforts also include a project called Afárá at the University of Ibadan that I
haven't heard much about lately, and several Yoruba or pan-Nigerian keyboard
efforts including a couple discussed more on the A12n-forum - NITDA and ABD
Yoruba - and another commercial effort called Konyin. The Yoruba language & ICT
message board at http://www.quicktopic.com/15/H/KKgbRqJUAR8 has more (Tunde
himself has posted there, and he and Alt-I have been mentioned more than
once).
In fact there's quite a bit happening with Yoruba - more perhaps than one could
expect Marc Lacey track down and report on (though the misinformation that
Yoruba is a language of Niger and Cameroon is unfortunate; it is spoken in
Benin and into part of Togo as Ana/Ife). Add to that some efforts such as those
for Igbo (keyboards and also a Linux localization effortl there hasn't yet been
as much activity for Nigeria's other "decamillionaire" language, Hausa), and
the level of activity in Nigeria starts to get impressive ... and the need for
discussion of standards becomes ever more urgent.
One could say much more (e.g., re the unicode training issue), but I'll let it
rest there for now.
I would like to take the opportunity to make a quick general comment about
Lacey's article. First, I think it's great that the issue of African languages
and ICT is getting this kind of attention. When I started really devoting
attention to this area in late 1999 and the concept of Bisharat was taking
shape (I personally came to this with other experience having worked a decade
earlier on a Fulfulde lexicon in dBaseIII and WP51), it was only a dream then
that an influential Northern newspaper like the NYT would give African language
computing such space.
All the best.
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
Quoting Doug Ewell <dewell@adelphia.net>:
> I babbled incoherently:
>
> > I'll bet the folks at Bisharat and elsewhere would be surprised at
> > the efforts that have been made to create keyboards for Yoruba.
>
> Should have been more like:
>
> "I'll bet Mr. Adegbola would be surprised at the efforts that have been
> made by the folks at Bisharat and elsewhere to create keyboards for
> Yoruba."
>
> -Doug Ewell
> Fullerton, California
> http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
>
>
>
>
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