Wonderful. My best wishes to all Malayalam Wiki participants.
We had earlier faced some issues with PediaPress to generate PDF versions of Tamil Wiki
articles. Was following up with the developers, but somehow left it in the limbo. Given
this state, do you think the software that you people have developed can be used to create
printable books also? If so, that would be great. Please share the technical details and
open source the software as much as possible.
Does this meetup also focus on other Malayalam Wiki projects like Wiktionary?
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the
expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
From: Shiju Alex <shijualexonline(a)gmail.com>
To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Sat, April 17, 2010 9:25:36 AM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Malayalam Wikimedians meetup - 2010 April 17 - Kalamasseri,
Ernakulam
Hello WikiMedians,
With great pleasure let me inform you about the Malayalam Wikimedia users meetup. Today
(2010 April 17) Malayalam Wikimedians are coming together for the 3rd wikimeetup at
RajaGiri College of Social Sciences, Kalamassery, Ernakulam. The first malayalam
wikimeetup was happened in 2007 Decemver 31, and the second meetup was in 2008 October 31.
We are extremely happy to inform you about some of the major things happening as a part of
this meetup.
1. We are releasing a Malayalam Wikipedia CD that contain 500 articles selected from the
12,000 articles that were available in Malayalam Wikipedia during 2010 March.
Please note that we are not releasing an offline version of malayalam wiki articles. It is
a customized version of articles very much similar to the English Wikipedia on CD
(
http://wikipediaondvd.com/). We have provided many other additional facilities/addons
that are applicable to Malayalam language on this CD. I will provide you the link to
download this CD after we release the CD at 3 PM Indian standard time.
With the release of this CD, we have become the first Indian language WikiMdedia
foundation Wiki releasing such a CD. Also, I assume that no other non-latin languages
tried this due to the number of technical hurdles that need to over come while working
with non-latin languages.
We have developed a dedicated application (in GNU/Linux) for creating this CD. I will
share you the details of this software as soon as it is available for community
development. I will write a separate mail regarding the efforts that went behind the
creation of this CD.
2.We are setting up a new website for coordinating the various activities of Malayalam
Wikimedians. I will share the link soon. The CD version of Malayalam Wikipedia will be
avilable for download from this site later today.
3. We are releasing a printed book (in Malayalam language) that contain 25 frequently
asked questions about Wiki, Wikipedia, and Malayalam Wikipedia. I think if this docuemnt
is translated to English, many other Indian languages can reuse it. Requeting the help of
wikimedians to translate it to English and available it to all. I will provide you the
link to download this book later today.
The production cost of CD and the book is sponsored byIT@school and the meetup is
sponsored by number of NGO's including SPACE.
We are trying for the live streaming of this event. The link will be provided as soon as
it is available.
I will share more details about the meetup later today.
Regards
Shiju Alex