The Hindu Business Line : Hindi software tools, fonts for free

The Chairperson of the National Advisory Council, Ms Sonia Gandhi, and the Minister for Communications and IT, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, releasing the Hindi language tools and fonts in the Capital on Monday. - - Ramesh Sharma

New Delhi , June 20

IN a drive to take computers to the masses through local language interfaces, the IT Department today released free Hindi software tools and fonts, and said such software would made available in 22 Indian languages within the next six months.

Releasing the software in the Capital, the National Advisory Council (NAC) Chairperson, Ms Sonia Gandhi, said, "With this launch, we have taken one more progressive step. Mr Rajiv Gandhi would have been happy to see the rapid strides that our country is taking in the IT sector, as this was his dream."

The software can either be downloaded from the Web site www.ildc.gov. in or ordered in a CD format. The CD contains tools developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), IIIT, Hyderabad, and private companies such as Modular Infotech, Cyberscape Multimedia Ltd, Priya Informatics, Cadgraf Digital System Ltd, C K Technologies, Prologix and Softview.

The tools in Hindi include Hindi True Type Fonts (TTF) with Font Driver, UNICODE-compliant Open Type Fonts (OTF) for Hindi, Hindi Language Multifont Keyboard Engine for TTF, Hindi UNICODE-compliant keyboard driver, BharateeyaOO.o in Hindi, Firefox browser in Hindi, GAIM-Multiprotocol Messenger in Hindi, Columba-Hindi e-mail client, Hindi OCR, Hindi dictionary, spellchecker, generic fonts code and storage code converter for Hindi, Assan typing tutor for Hindi and English, Integrated Word Processor, and Hindi language translation tool and text-to-speech system.

The Minister for Communications and IT, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, said efforts were on to make the fonts available in all the 22 languages within six months. This would open the door for computer penetration in villages where 95 per cent of the people speak in their mother tongue, he pointed out.

"We have 16 million computers and net penetration of five million. There is much to achieve. First we should have local language content, which is at a minimal level at present," Mr Maran said. Mr Maran said the idea was to create a translation browser in different languages so that news provided by different organisations such as CNN could be translated.

In a lighter vein, he referred to his plight during the speeches made by the Railway Minister, Mr Lalu Prasad. "When Laluji spoke in Hindi, I used to look for people who would translate his speeches for me.... In future, there could be a software which can be worn like a watch and plugged to the ear so that when Laluji speaks, I can understand," he said evoking laughter from the audience.

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Hindi software tools, fonts for free