Pune, September 18, 2003

C-DAC Mumbai (formerly National Centre for Software Technology - NCST), today released GNU Linux enabled for Sanskrit, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi, using the specially developed Bharatiya Engine. The enabling of five Indian language, release of the Bharatiya Engine and launching of the IndiX website was carried out by Shri. Kamal Kant Jaswal, IAS, Secretary to Government of India, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology at a function, PanchBhasha Yoga, held at C-DAC Mumbai.

A team of scientists and font design specialists at C-DAC Mumbai has implemented IndiX, which enables Indian language support, by modifying the inner framework of the core window system on Linux. Typefaces such as JanaSansKrit, JanaKannada, JanaTamil, JanaMalayalam and JanaMarathi, in Open Type format based on Unicode international standards have been designed and integrated for the purpose. IndiX is the outcome of the research in Indian language technology that has been carried out for over twenty-five years at the erstwhile National Centre for Software Technology, NCST, now C-DAC Mumbai.

The most significant advantage of IndiX is its ability to support internationalized applications for Indic text without recompilation or modification. An enabling infrastructure, will allow many applications to use Indian languages with the same ease as English. For example, popular web browsers and composers like Netscape and Mozilla can be used on IndiX. In a country where the majority is not well conversant with English, this new technology will help in spreading the use of computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web to masses.

IndiX throws open opportunities for the Indian software industry to develop special software tools for the Indian masses. Further, it could well become the catalyst that spawns a new industry of content creation in Indian languages.

Dr. J. D. Smith, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge, UK, famous for the Mahabharata on the web, has this to say about IndiX: "… it does deliver what it promises - a working Linux system with Devanagari enabled. It is for example very nice to be able to connect to the BBC's website and read the news in Hindi."

India has shown, with this work, that its highly logical and scientific languages can be expressed in terms of software technology and implemented into the inner framework of a modern operating system.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri. Kamal Kant Jaswal said that Linux as the stable, free and open source operating system is becoming a very popular base for computer usage in India, with a large number of industry also embracing it. For IT usage to reach most of the Indian community, computers need to move away from English and allow use in Indian Languages at all levels, said Shri. Jaswal. C-DAC Mumbai's effort in Localizing Linux, he hoped, will enable computers to support a range of Indian languages at the core level.

The IndiX project has been funded by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Govt. of India under its TDIL program.

Also present on the occasion were Shri. Y. S. Bhave, Joint Secretary and Financial Advisor, Dept. of Information Technology, Govt. of India, Shri. R.K. Arora, Executive Director, C-DAC, and Shri. George Arakal, Registrar, C-DAC, Mumbai. Several distinguished technologists, linguists, industrialists and several government officials.

(http://www.ncst.ernet.in/projects/indix/)

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