e88~~\ 888b | 888 | / 888 888 ,e, d888 |Y88b | 888 | L 888 888-~88e e88~\888 " /~~~8e 8888 __ | Y88b | 888 | I 888 888 888 d888 888 888 88b 8888 | | Y88b | 888 | N 888 888 888 8888 888 888 e88~-888 Y888 | | Y88b| Y88 | U 888 888 888 Y888 888 888 C888 888 "88__/ | Y888 "8__/ X 888 888 888 "88_/888 888 "88_-888 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Formerly LinuxInIndia * Compiled by: Frederick Noronha * Apr 25 2004 --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Patents and copyrights are totally different, and the way to help people understand them is never to mix them up or lump them together.... Software patents bring nothing to our community except danger. I am glad that Red Hat is getting some patents to use to defend against Microsoft's patents. (I hope Red Hat never turns around to use them for aggression.) But the only help these patents give us is to block part of the danger of patents -- and only part of it! They have no positive effect. Taken all together, the patents do not play any role in the vitality of our community. Most patents threaten us, and a few may partly defend us from the threat of the rest. We would be much better off if nobody had any software patents.
India has wisely refused to allow software patents. Every supporter of free software in India should be helping to support that policy. Would you please help? Please don't invite people to lump together a hypothetical future Indian law (software patents) that can kill our community and an existing Indian law (copyright) that has no such power. -- Richard M Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
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FROM BANGALORE, Kartik N <kartikn79 at symonds.net> sent out a recent reminder about plans for April's BLUG (Bangalore Linux Users' Group) meet, which was held on April 23. The agenda focussed on talks on filesystems in GNU/Linux (by Arun) and the CD file system features (by Sreekiran). BLUG meets usually take place between 6 to 8 pm at Hotel Ashraya International Infantry Road, Opposite Police Commissioner's Office, Phone : +91 (80) 2262921. Map - http://linux-bangalore.org/images/ashraya-map.png
Cover charge is Rs.100 per person (includes dinner). More details at: http://linux-bangalore.org/meetings/200404/ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
LOCALISATION LIST from Bangalore is at http://lli.linux-bangalore.org ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
GNUS GRAZING @ BANGALORE: Fans of the Free Software movement meanwhile announced a meeting at Bangalore. It was called on Sunday, April 18 at the unearthly hour of 10 am (no offence meant, I'm usually fast asleep by then). The rendezvous-point was in front of Gangaram's Bookstore on MG Road. Difficult to miss. You could get more details via Fsf-friends mailing list Fsf-friends@mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends
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AFFORDABLE CDs ARE AVAILABLE VIA MAIL-ORDER FROM swathantra software s2s2@linux.net One recent email announced that available CDs included: * CD with more than 2000 HOWTOs just for 100 Rupees (Learn more about server setup, programming, kernel, network, installation, adminstration, troubleshooting, and more.) * Other popular distributions also available RedHat 7.1(2 CDs), 7.3, 8, 9 -set of 3 CDs Rs 120 Redhat 7.3,8 single CD with autoinstallation (GLUE CD) Rs.60 * Fedora Core 1 set of 3 CDs Rs 120 * Mandrake 9.2 set of 3 CDs Rs.150 * Mandrake 10-set of 3 CDs Rs.180 * K12LTSP (a popular distro with terminal server and a lot of educational softwares) set of 4 CDs Rs.250 * GISMorphix Rs.100 * Knoppix 3.3 (Debian) single live CD Rs.70 (HD installation possible) * OpenOffice 1.1, Mozilla 1.5, Mozilla Firebird 0.7 (Linux/WIndows) Rs 80. Shipping charges extra as applicable. (Rs 20 by courier, Rs 10 by ordinary parcel).
Send demand draft in favour of Swathanthra Software Solutions and Support payable at Kannur (Kerala) or money order. Or contact by email or phone Sujeevan, Swathantra Software Solutions & Support (S2S2), 33, Brigade Center, Gr Floor, Nr Prabhat Building, Fort Rd, Kannur 670001 Kerala Phone: Off 0497-2761182 Res: 0497-2790811 Cell :9447449107 Email: s2s2<at>linux.net Web site http://www.s2s2net.netfirms.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
GET A FREE linux.net email address: http://linux.net Powered by Linare Corporation http://www.linare.com/ Check the Chennai link... ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
CONGRATULATIONS, CRV: Radhakrishnan aka CVR <cvr at river-valley.org> recently announced his marriage to Vidya, "my long time friend and colleague for a decade". The big-day was April 18, 2004. The marriage was marked by what CVR calls "a very simple function attended by our family members and closest friends alone". Take a peek at http://tug.org/~cvr/knot/ Congrats to this longtime champion of TeX and the Tug User Group down south. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
FROM THE PHILIPPINES GNU/Linux mailing list (see details or subscribe at http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug-misc ) Holden Hao <holden at philonline.com.ph> writes in to say: "Linux For You is a great magazine. Anybody know if this is already available in the Philippines?" Here's hoping India can meet the potential when it sees it! ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
KDE, KPPP AND INTERNET DIALERS: Guntupalli Karunakar <karunakar at freedomink.org> is working on the KDE live CD, and is planning to have kppp ("the cool KDE Internet dialer") to include some prominent ISPs across India configured for it -- e.g. VSNL, BSNL (Sancharnet), Satyam, etc. Says he: "I need their dialup numbers and any other setting that are used for them. Ideally you one could just send me /home/user/.kde/share/config/kppprc (of course with the username / password removed ). We will have an internet dialup icon on desktop or panel, clicking which will make the kppp dialog to come up. All the user would then need to do is select his ISP number and give the username and password, and dial. At present it would work with external modems only." Please do help, if you can! ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
THIS NOTE IS FROM INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST Frederic Dubois <frederic at cmaq.net> of Montreal in Canada who says: " I have written an article on free software in India and Canada. You can read it at: http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?sh_itm=3d9755aef06d3654ab98d07488 e37a5a&r=1 There is also a discussion happening in the babble section: http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=31&t=0002... " ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
WANNA BUY A SIMPUTER? Check this note from S D Sudarsan, a member of the senior research staff at the CRL-BEL in Bangalore sudarsan_crl@yahoo.com who informs: "I've been receiving enquiries on buying Simputers from BEL. The contact details are as below:
Deepak Kumar MMF Division Bangalore Complex Bharat Electronics Limited Jalahalli PO Bangalore - 560 013 Tel: 080-23618184 Cell: 98800 88396
As I understand the lowest model is below 10K and goes upto 20K for the Amida Simputer. You can contact Mr Sudarsan at crl-bel bangalore - 560013 tel: 080-28381125/26/27 fax: 080-28381168 sdsudarsan at crl.bel.co.in or sudarsan_crl at yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
QUOTE... UNQUOTE: We in India have a Vision 2020... Can we reach there by keeping security holes in the armour? Don't we need to have some IndLix, Bhartix or Tricolix, duly certified by (computing institutions like) NCST, C-DAC etc that will work for the whole of country and sort out the interoperability issues also along with it? -- J.S. Sandha CEO Jagriti e-Sewa (www.jagriti.com) Jalandhar 098141-84878 <jsandha at vsnl.net> ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
HERE'S SOME MORE GOOD NEWS courtesy Tarun Kant <tarunkant at linux.net> who says: Mandrake Linux is available in 66 languages and Hindi is one of them. Check out the following link and you will be pleasently surprised: http://www.mandrakelinux.com/l10n/hi.php3 To know about what other languages are supported check out: http://www.mandrakelinux.com/l10n/translations.php3
[ Dr Kant is a scientist at the Forest Genetics & Tree Breeding Division, Arid Forest Research Institute, Jodhpur http://www.geocities.com/bobkant/ ] ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
THREE CHEERS TO KERALA: This input is from linux_schools at yahoo.com (Herald), who writes: Kerala is leading in Free/Libre and Open Source Software front. 200 schools multiplied by 100 students on an average gives 20 thousand GNU/Linux users. Children are very curious and fast in experimenting and learning new things. When they go home and talk about it, the elders also will be automatically interested in checking what this software is. Similarly the Engineering students will start getting interest in Free Softwares.... In Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh there are only the private schools to harvest as the government ones have been captured by Microsoft. Check http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/linux_schools/
MAHESH T PAI added earlier: About 200 schools in Malappuram district installed GNU/Linux. The driving force behind this initiative, AFAIK, is one Mr. Sujeevan P, of an organisation called IIRC, S2S2. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
CHECK OUT THE linux-india-programmers mailing list linux-india-programmers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-programmers ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
READER-RATED WEB-PAGES From Arun Sharma <arun at freebsd.org>, a message that came in via the FreeBSD list: I've been experimenting with a new way of separating the more interesting content on the web from the less interesting ones. Mainly by using human intelligence. http://www.sharma-home.net/software/vote/vote.html If you find this interesting, you're welcome to download this small piece of open source software and try it out. The more users there are, the more useful this tool will be. The mozilla firefox extension requires you to customize the toolbar and manually add the new button to the toolbar. It takes about 5 mins for a new submission to show up on the results page. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
INTERESTED IN FREE BSD? Check out http://www.bsd-india.org/mailman/listinfo/bsd-india ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVING GNU/LINUX: Shrave <shrave1 at yahoo.com> who does much to keep active the mailing list http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/blore-linux/ comments:
The following I feel are the top three areas that need to be addressed for moving Linux into the massive consumer and small office markets.
1) I would suggest students to try and target one critically important piece of the Linux desktop puzzle: USB synching of OpenOffice documents and a cross platform PIM such as Chandler. This would allow Linux notebooks and tablets to be deployed en masse in most Windows based offices. Market share would then likely be built very rapidly as the case with Palm Pilots and their USB connected strategy. With market share, follows developer support, and a relatively quick destruction of the Microsoft desktop monopoly.
2) Adding a GOCR module to OpenOffice should be another high priority goal. GOCR is the open source optical character recognition project (OCR). For those that are not familiar (with the concept), OCR is used to convert paper based documents into editable word processor documents using a scanner. GOCR is currently command line-based, but works very well. Developing this into a GUI version that could become an optional add on module for OpenOffice would be very useful for small offices and home offices considering a Linux desktop. Unlike developers, most end users live in a sea of paper-based documents and adding a bridge to access these documents digitally allows businesses to go to Linux desktops much more confidently.
3) Adding a photo-editing module to OpenOffice similar to Apple's iPhoto. This would tend to really help in promoting uptake of OpenOffice and Linux desktops in consumer market. Digital cameras are now outselling film cameras and this is going to get even more important in the next few years. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
INTERESTED IN FLOSS in Mangalore (coastal south-western India)? Find more about us at http://www.linux-mangalore.org ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
LOCALISATION NEWSLETTER: G Karunakar karunakar@freedomink.org who is the IndLinux.org coordinator, says:
On behalf of the Localization community in India we are happy to bring out the first issue of the Localization Newsletter. Aim of this newsletter is to highlight localization activities based on Free/Libre and Open Source Software, present a complete picture, and to serve as a mouthpiece for all localization teams and their volunteers.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS ISSUE: * Headlines : Bengali, Punjabi supported languages in Gnome 2.6, Hindi and Tamil supported in KDE 3.2 * In News Bits : PCQLinux2004 with Indic support, Devanagari & Gujarati Opentype fonts, Mozilla build with Indic support. * In Team Watch : Sayamindu Dasgupta speaking on Ankur Bangla project.
Read complete issue at http://www.indlinux.org/nl/nl150404.html A pdf of it is available at http://www.indlinux.org/nl/nlvol1.pdf (238KB) Comments are welcome, and can be mailed to the editorial team or posted on http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php/NewsletterFeedback If you would like to recieve copy of newsletter regularly you can subscribe to the mailing list http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/indlinux-news ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
SOME MORE ON LOCALISATION: "Arky" <rakesh_ambati at yahoo.com> says: Perhaps being children of lesser god we don't have such resources, yet localization work is going at a good pace (see http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?LocalizationNewsletter )
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MADE IN INDIA, WELCOMED IN THE GULF: A comment from the Gulf region, where Manoj Menon <manojcmenon at yahoo.com> recently commented on the Linux-middleeast@yahoogroups.com newsgroup:
Linux based PDA for less than 1000 AED ... and best of all, its made in India. http://www.amidasimputer.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ASSAMESE LANGUAGE: Jyotirmoy Saikia <jyotirmoy_saikia at yahoo.com> of Picopeta, the Simputer guys in Bangalore, asks an interesting query:
Can I type Assamese from Yudit using Inscript? Assamese and Bengali scripts are same except two consonants: (i) Consonat RA (this is character U09F0 in Assamese and character U09B0 in Bengali) (ii) Consonant VA (this is chracter U09F1 in Assamese, which is equivalent of Devanagari character U0935). As far as I know, there is no consonat VA in Bengali.
I have looked at the Open Type Akaash bengali font and found that the characters U09FO and U09F1 are present in the font. But using the Inscript keyboard layout for Bengali, I can't type these characters. I believe we need a seperate Inscript keyboard map for Assamese. What is the suggestion from other people in the group? Similarly, we'll need a Assamese keyboard map for the Milan release also; am I wrong?
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OFFICIAL SUPPORT FOR LOCALISATION WORK? Jitendra Shah <jitendras at vsnl.com> reports that it is now "certain" that he will be working from C-DAC Mumbai (formerly NCST) on a Central Government Localisation project with the objective of localising Free/Opensource (GNU/Linux) in indian languages with three angles: development of localised software (OS and some applications for SOHEdu), deployment, and building a community of developers and users.
Says he: "I think the objective is broad enough." Sometime back, Shah started the work with a volunteer team. "It is heartening to see that there are souls in the government who can identify and support such noble causes too. While I believe such work will have to be done by dedicated people without a pre-condtion of government support, there can be no doubt that progress can leapfrog when there is official backing, particularly when such support includes support for community participation rather than excluding it."
Shah has a team of "good people who may want to contribute". But he's also looking out for others who could get involved and help. He adds: "Since the work is at all three levels -- system level, application level and (only to some extent) content level, many people can contribute." Shah and team have also been working on the conversion of legacy documents to Unicode.
He adds: "I am trying to convert the silos of legacy data from ISFOC/Akruti/ShreeLipi/whathaveyou to unicode. This has been welcomed by the (Maharashtra) State government as well as Central government and corporates. I propose to use the programs to help generate sustainance for the developers through services rendered and eventually all programs will be free/open source. I have now converted the Rajya Sabha webpage into Hindi and also IITBombay pages."
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