TAMIL-BASED COMPUTING
N.Nandhivarman
“The blending of the language and software
disciplines led to the emergence of new areas like ‘Language Engineering’,
‘Internationalization and Localization’ and ‘Tamil-based Computing’ says
S.Kuppuswami Dean of the Ramanujam School of Mathematics and Computer Sciences of
Pondicherry University. The Government of India had declared Tamil as classical
language and the evolution in computer technology with increased applications
necessitated the adaptation of Tamil in computers. Internet is a mostly used by
English knowing peoples in view of the content and presentation being in
English. Since Internet has to reach more people the need of the hour is
Tamil-based computing. “ The unique and unparalleled role of two academicians
of Pondicherry University in Tamil based computing has not been recognized by
Tamil scholars” opined President of Anna Foundation C.P.Thirunavukarasu former
M.P
S.Kuppuswami and V.Prasanna
Venkatesan of Pondicherry University developed a prototype of Tamil Computer in
the year 1996. Having this prototype as base Government of Tamilnadu had taken
initiatives on standardization of keyboard, coding schemes and technical words
for realizing the Tamil Computer and constituted a committee The committee
broadly divided the issues related to Tamil Computer into language and computer
based issues. The language-based issues mainly focuses on the language to be
adopted in computer and the changes in the language elements like character
composition, character set, grammar etc. It was decided that there was no change
required in the character set and composition. Standardizing the Tamil grammar
is still a progressing work.
“The next one is the computer
system related issues like keyboard layouts, character coding scheme, domain
naming etc. In order to work with different Tamil software, the users have to
learn different keyboard layouts and complicate the keying-in process. This is
due to the non-availability of standard Tamil keyboard layout. In order to
select and standardize a Tamil keyboard layout, the committee decided to
categorize the existing Tamil keyboard layouts and analyze them. Tamil keyboard
layouts proposed by the various software developers and researchers have been
collected and categorized into four groups” explains V.Prasanna Venkatesan.
Keyboard layouts based on the
phonemes and frequencies of usage of Tamil characters are classified as
Phonetic keyboard layouts. Layouts which follow the Tamil typewriter keyboard
are classified as Typewriter-like keyboard layouts. In Romanized keyboard
layouts mapping of the Tamil characters to the corresponding English characters
is done on transliteration basis. The keyboard layouts which do not fall under
the above categories are grouped as others.
An extensive analysis was carried
out in three phases on the Tamil keyboard layouts to determine their efficiency
for keying-in of Tamil texts selected from various Tamil literatures of
different periods. S.Kuppuswami and V.Prasanna Venkatesan have jointly
developed benchmarking software to analyze the Tamil keyboard layouts and
recommended the results to Government of Tamilnadu, which led to steps being
taken for release of the standardized Tamil keyboard layout for Tamil software
development.
The UNICODE consortium did
standardizing the character-coding scheme but it was commented for the
limitations. To over come this hurdle the duo designed a coding scheme for
Tamil based on sorting, storage, and memory and performance constraints. In
addition jointly they have developed many Tamil software for the Tamil usage
and users. While two scholars from Pondicherry University have shown the way to
Tamil computing there is little interaction between them and Tamil scholars of
Pondicherry.
But at the same time
Pondicherry’s Tamil scholars are realizing that they should not be left behind
and recently an effort is being made to introduce them to netizens. And in the
forefront of this endeavor is Rasa. Thiagarasan. While the print media nowadays
is promoting modern verse an Ezine launched before ten months from Pondicherry had
encouraged Tamil writers to compose poems strictly following the grammatical
rules and meter. “Since Marabu kavithaigal have become a rare species we
decided to promote and preserve them in net world” says, Rasa Thiagarajan
editor of the Tamil ezine Pudhucherry that can be viewed at
www.pudhucherry.com.
Entirely new breeds of writers
have come up in the net world. They started in writing blogs and blossomed into
fully talented writers of the day. Especially women could assert their presence
by writing in ezines. Puthiya Madhavai from Mumbai, Madhumitha from Chennai,
Shailaja from Bangalore, Nirmala Suresh of Kolkatta, Jayanthi Shankar from
Singapore are few of the feminine writers who have left their imprint.
Intense debate on Tamil
development and Tamil oriented discussions are going on in yahoo groups such as
Marathadi, Tamil Ulagam, Santha Vasantham, Raayar Kapi Klup. The group santha
vasantham is debating Marabu illakiyam, which means heritage poetry or
traditional poetry.
Professor Anantha Narayanan of
Bio Chemistry department University of Toronto Canada is a scholar known to
world by ezines and e-writings. These trendsetters have now generated interest
among the Tamil scholars of Pondicherry. Pulavar Se.Ramalingan brought such
scholars under one umbrella. The President of Pudhuvai Tamil Sangam Mannar
Mannan launched the first ever e-zine from Pondicherry which had come out for
10 months and given space for Pondicherry's Tamil scholars to record their
inner voice. “We are e-publishing this journal on a non-remunerative basis
says. Se.Ramalingan who edits the ezine. The ezine Pudhucherry contains links
to various other ezines and tries to introduce everything to everyone. The life
histories of Tamil Scholars like Maraimalai Adigal, Deveneya Paavanar, Mahakavi
Bharathiar, U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer finds place in this ezine. The pages of Tamil
Virtual University, lists of electronic texts of Project Madurai, Online Tamil
lexicon of University of Cologne are given links. The valuable compilation of Anthology
of Malaysian Tamil Poetry 1887-1987 is brought to light. The news of the
world’s first Tamil SMS launched in Singapore by Oli, Singapore’s Tamil Radio
on 15 th January 2005 with lyricist Vairamuthu participating indicates the
direction in which Tamil is heading for. “Sellinam” the Tamil name for mobile
software developed by Muthu Nedumaran whose Murasu Email had earlier
established him as single man contributing to Open source software is also
mentioned in its pages. “ Though Computer Scholars and Tamil Scholars of
Pondicherry are working in isolation with no interconnectivity they are
establishing that Pondicherry leads” says Dr. Ira.Thirumurugan of the Tamil
Development Independent Initiative.
[courtesy: New Indian Express
: 3rd September 2005]
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