News 21 of 50

For more information about the PAN Localization project click here

Source: Kuensel Online: http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4531

Dzongkha computing on Linux
Posted on Thursday, September 23 @ 12:09:23 CDT BST

Thimphu : 23 September 2004 - The Dzongkha Development Authority, the Department of Information and Technology and Sherubtse College in Kanglung are working together to enable Dzongkha computing on the Linux operating system.

It is part of a larger project on developing local language computing capacity in Asia. Besides Bhutan, the project and which is underway in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

The project is supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, through its Pan Asia Networking (PAN) programme and the National University of Computers and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Pakistan, the project is developing human resource capability in the region for developing local language computing, to raise current levels of technology in Asian languages, and to advance the policy of local language content creation and access across Asia are the objectives of the project.

PAN localizing project focuses on documenting the problems and researching the solutions to enable localisation of ICT according to a Pan Asia Networking journal.

In Bhutan, the project started in May this year. "It is a cheaper way of providing Dzongkha computing to those who can read and write Dzongkha because the Linux system is free," said project manager Jigme Tenzing.

The Department of Information and Technology has engaged three of its programmers, the Dzongkha Development Authority is shouldering the responsibility of font-logging, development and modification and translation, and Sherubtse College is in-charge of the quality control and bug testing.

"Translating the computer menus to Dzongkha has been most taxing," said Jigme Tenzing. "We are only translating most commonly used 28,000 messages leaving aside a major portion. To do a complete job would require translating some 150,000 messages," he told Kuensel.

The department has also hired a consultant from India while the professionals involved with the project went to Pakistan last year for a training.

So far, the project had developed input capabilities, keyboard drivers, locale, coalition sequence and rendering engine to display Dzongkha characters on the monitor.

According to Jigme Tenzing it would take another two years to be able to use Dzongkha word, excel, emails, websites, and have a small distribution of the programmes in CDs.

Jigme Tenzing said Dzongkha computing on LINUX was an enhancement to an operating system. It was also using Unicode based fonts which made reading documents easy on any operating system.

According to DIT officials, programmes developed for Dzongkha computing on other operating systems like Microsoft so far was not user-friendly and automated. It required some configuring. But it is expected to overcome this with the next release of Longhorn.

2004-09-23

News 21 of 50