2004.12_Save Money Using Linux, Venezuela Goes Open Source, Indic Localization.pdf

NEWS

World

World News

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Milestones for Asian Input Systems

Licensed under the

GPL, the software

runs under X11 on

Linux, FreeBSD and

other Unix-style

systems. With a

UTF-8 supporting

X-terminal emula-

tor such as mlterm

and a larger font such as ming_uni.ttf

installed, XCIN users can input more Tra-

ditional Chinese characters and phrases

under Linux than they could do with MS

Windows.

Edward Liu is busy developing another

CIN project, GCIN, the “GTK Chinese

Input application” for X. GCIN is

released under the GPL. Edward

announced a new “phrase preselect” fea-

ture in version 0.4. GCIN currently

supports Traditional Chinese (as used in

Taiwan) and Japanese character sets.

It has been a prolonged mission for soft-

ware developers in the Chinese,

Japanese and Korean (CJK) speaking

countries to create usable and useful lan-

guage input systems. Reflecting the

relevance of these East-Asian languages,

input systems developed for the Chinese

language normally can be extended to

support Japanese and Korean fonts and

input methods easily. During the past

months, a number of Taiwan-based pro-

jects developing Chinese input (CIN)

systems which enable users to display

and input Chinese characters when

using Linux and BSD applications have

announced breakthroughs.

Three UTF-8 support patches have

been added to the new 2.5.3pre3 version

of XCIN, a popular Chinese input

method. They came from Red Hat, Fire-

fly, and Kuang-che Wu; the latter two are

Taiwanese free software developers.

The diversity

of CIN applica-

tions has its downside though:

Integration work is urgently required for

further free software development in

East Asia. Luckily the developers them-

selves are very enthusiastic about

exchanging various fonts and input.

http://www.software-facilities.com/

chinese-software/gcin.php

http://www.csie.nctu.edu.tw/~cp76/gcin

http://xcin.linux.org.tw

http://mlterm.sourceforge.net

http://linux.taigi.idv.tw

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Indic Localization Gets Formal

As Open Source localization (L10n) gains

more and more momentum on the

Indian subcontinent with its numerous

languages and alphabets (see Issue 45

p), coordination of the several Indic L10n

projects has become a vital issue. Volun-

teer groups and organizations involved

in this big task were invited to put their

money where their mouths are and meet

in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), on Sep-

tember 18 and 19.

Among the attendants were

representatives of the “Technol-

ogy Development for Indian

Languages” (TDIL) working

group of the State Department of

Information Technology, the

L10n teams for Hindi, Gujarati,

Tamil, Oriya, Urdu and Bengali,

and several scientific institu-

tions and companies (including

IBM and Red Hat). One of their

goals was to find a channel for

cooperation with international

development bodies like Uni-

code, Pango, or the X-Consortium.

As a result the meeting saw the forma-

tion of a Working Group that include

team leaders from all Indic L10n groups.

Its aim is to focus on L10n of free and

Open Source software, and as an imme-

diate goal, to suggest policy changes in

order to encourage L10n of software in

Indian languages. Here the group is to

suggest a law which mandates inclusion

of localized software with every PC

shipped in the country, similar to the

Chinese one.

But localized applications are only half

the story. Action is also needed regarding

documentation, and usability. Here the

discussion centered around creating doc-

umentation specific to Indic L10n which

addresses areas of usability and learn-

ability with regard to creation of test

cases and test suites. In a resolution at

the end of the meeting, the participants

called to pro-actively engage

with publishers to promote con-

tent in Indian languages. With

the creation of an online L10n

status map, the Working Group

would also take stock of pend-

ing tasks like documentation,

development of Unicode aware

applications and collation.

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http://tdil.mit.gov.in

http://www.indictrans.org

http://indlinux.org

http://tdil.mit.gov.in/download/

openfonts.htm

December 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

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World

NEWS

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Venezuela Goes for Open Source

Russian Linux Components

for Taiwan

Russian programmers will be developing

security-enhanced Linux components

for Taiwan’s governmental institutions.

The decision to sign a contract to this

effect at the “Russian-Taiwan Forum”

in Moscow at the beginning of Sep-

tember was made after the Russian

consortium “Inforus” presented the

Taiwan Institute for Information Industry

(III) its ideas on “the Linux of the

future”. Inforus is an umbrella organiza-

tion of more than 70 Russian IT

companies. Its aim is to initiate offshore

programming contracts with foreign

partners.

Although the contract details them-

selves remain secret, Inforus’ President

Andrey Masalovich was proud to point

out some of the ideas that had convinced

the Taiwanese side.

One of these ideas was, for example,

"smart folders" that group documents

based on search criteria rather than their

physical location, a built-in search

engine, and honeypots to trap hackers

scanning for vulnerabilities.

Software development was reported

to have begun at the end of September:

a hitherto undisclosed company from

St. Petersburg is responsible for pilot

versions of the components, and each

of the modules, which are being devel-

oped simultaneously, will take “no less

than 10 man-months”.

All secrets aside, Masalovich was

eager to make one important point: “The

price was determined according to

international (neither Asian nor Russian)

outsourcing rates, that is without price

dumping”, Masalovich said.

Venezuela’s government is working on a

decree to establish the support and adop-

tion of Open Source software throughout

public administration. When President

Hugo Chavez announced this move dur-

ing the opening ceremony of a new

public info center with 60 Internet work-

stations and several smaller ones

September 28, the Minister of Science

and Technology, Yadira Córdoba, made

clear that the government is serious

about its self-proclaimed principle of

“national scientific independence” from

privately owned software.

Not only is her ministry one of the

early adopters of Open Source software

in the South-American country, but all of

the more than 300 info centers nation-

wide avoid the use of proprietary soft-

ware. They provide public Internet

access in accordance with the govern-

ment’s plan to raise the educational level

especially in poorer areas. According to

president Chavez, 343 of them will be set

up by the end of 2004.

In addition, 81 of a total of about 300

municipalities are already populating an

eGovernment platform based on free

software. Success stories like these aside,

Córdoba admits that the entire migration

process needs time: “We don’t want to

implement the changes too quickly

because they mean introducing a new

culture, and new points of view. On the

contrary, we want to adopt free software

step by step.”

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Smaller Cities Can Save Money Using Linux

An average EUR 308 per desktop could be

saved annually, if Dutch cities were to

embrace Linux. As part of the A7-project,

named after the A7-highway, the Dutch

ICT consulting company Footmark BV

investigated the IT-infrastructure of five

small and medium sized townships with

60 to 140 workstations each.

In the course of the study it became

apparent that money could be saved if

terminal server solutions were imple-

mented based on a combination of

Windows Terminal Server and Linux Ter-

minal Server, instead of the traditional

Windows-only implementation. By mix-

ing the two systems, legacy applications

would remain operational, saving expen-

sive migration efforts. In the future the

study expects more and more critical

applications to become available for

Linux and envisages extra cost-saving

opportunities.

As a side-effect of the study, city IT

departments started to see alternatives to

their present solutions. “Openoffice.org

migrations like the one in the city of

Haarlem [ed.: see Issue 42 p12] showed

them that they are customers and thus

have a natural right to put demands on

the table”, says Bouke Koelstra, Product

Manager Open Source with Footmark. As

a result of increasing pressure, the Dutch

market leader in government software,

PinkRoccade, announced future Linux

support. And their main competitor,

Centric, had no option but to follow suit.

Meanwhile the study has been noted

by the Dutch parliament and socialist

MEP Martijn van Dam asked what the

Ministry of Internal Affairs was going to

do with the results. Van Dam hopes to

increase the budget of the government

open standards and Open Source pro-

moter OSOSS.

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http://inforus.biz/eng

http://inforus.biz/eng/company

Have Greg ping me the bare figures

from finance and I bet I bring this

hot baby home!!

Thanks. JT.

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