The Hindu Business Line : C-DAC unveils Tamil software tools, fonts

THE Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a scientific society of the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, has released free Tamil software tools and fonts. The former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Mr M. Karunanidhi, released them at a function here on Friday.

The new software tools and fonts to be available in public domain are: true type fonts, unicode-compliant open type fonts, Tamil version of BharateeyaOO.o, FireFox (Tamil browser for Linux and Windows), Columba (a Tamil e-mail for Linux and Windows) and Min Olai (a Java-based Tamil editor with spelling checker by Anna University), PonVizhi (a Tamil optical character recognition) and Pals Tamil e-Dictionary (Tamil dictionary tool).

Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, speaking at a function said that C-DAC would work on a tool to transliterate English content on the Web to Tamil or any other regional language and vice versa. It will also work on voice recognition software, which will convert voice into text, he said.

In his remarks, Mr Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India, which also launched its Tamil interface tools, said that software in local language was critical for the country's growth. If everybody needs to learn English to use a computer, the rich cultural languages such as Tamil will lose its rich heritage, he said.

Only five per cent of the Indian population can read, write or speak in English. Hence, it is important that software is available in local language so that people need not first learn English to use a computer, he said.

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