Dated September 27, 2003
The Hindu: Business Line

The Pune-based C-DAC has given a shot in the arm for open source Linux proponents in the country by releasing GNU Linux enabled for Sanskrit, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi, which uses the specially developed Bharatiya engine.

A team of scientists and font design specialists at C-DAC has implemented IndiX, which enables Indian language support by modifying the inner framework of the core window system on Linux.

Typefaces such as JanaSanskrit, JanaKanada, JanaTamil, JanaMalayalam and JanaMarathi, in open type format based on Unicode international standards have been designed and integrated for the purpose.

C-DAC sources said that the IndiX was the outcome of the research in Indian language technology that had been carried out for over 25 years at the centre, which was then NCST.

An enabling infrastructure would allow many applications to use Indian languages with the same ease as English.

For instance, popular Web browsers and composers like Netscape and Mozilla can be used on IndiX. (It cannot be used with Internet Explorer, as it is a modification of Linux while IE is Windows-based.)

The Hindi version of IndiX has already been released as Phase I of the project.

The IndiX installation CDs would be available at a nominal price on request. Details are available at www.ncst.ernet.in/project/indix