<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt">Dear Murali,<br><br>Thanks for your efforts. Natkeeran, an active Tamil Wikipedian, has also downloaded the entire encyclopaedia. He is also stalled at the OCR stage. There are some Tamil OCR projects at IISc Mile lab under Prof.A.G.Ramakrishnan and some other government-supported labs.<br>However, I'm yet to see one that is publicly available and ready to use. That said, we're still working to get even an alpha version for this purpose.<br><br>I would welcome you to connect with Natkeeran (copied) to take this further.<br><br>- Sundar<br><div> </div>"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."<br>- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture<div><br></div><blockquote style="border-left: 2px
solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Murali Kumar <pthooran@hotmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Mon, November 15, 2010 11:33:22 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [Wikimediaindia-l] Tamil Encyclopedia merge into Wikipedia.<br></font><br>
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<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Dear Wikimedia India,</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span>As you probably aware the Govt. of India, immediately post Independence started multiple Indian language encyclopedia projects to stream in Science and Technology. The Tamil language encyclopedia was completed [<a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Encyclopedia">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Encyclopedia</a>] </span></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span"
face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">I'm pleased to report Tamil Virtual University has scanned in the Tamil Kalaikalanjiam / Tamil Encyclopedia [Please see Reference 1 below].</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">I was able to download the material via the wonderful wget command and the 'convert' (from imagemagick lib) in GNU/Linux. However each of the 10 volumes is close to 700 MB without compression.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">I
would imagine, the people behind this mammoth task (pre-internet era) would have liked it to be merged into a Wiki type format, which would make it a truly living document </span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma">in-sync</font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"> with the times.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">I do not have any experience with 1) Tamil OCR software and 2) Automated updates to Wikipedia. </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span"
face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Can anyone take the lead on this project ? It will help boost the number of quality, articles in Indian languages. The Children's encyclopedia is being scanned and has a lot of great visual content.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span>I have uploaded a sample (10 MB) PDF file at <a target="_blank" href="https://sites.google.com/site/periasamythooran/kalaikalanjiam/kalaikalanjiamWikiMergeAttempt.pdf">https://sites.google.com/site/periasamythooran/kalaikalanjiam/kalaikalanjiamWikiMergeAttempt.pdf</a> if you are interested to give it a spin.</span></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Thanks,</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Murali.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span>1. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.tamilvu.org/library/libindex.htm">http://www.tamilvu.org/library/libindex.htm</a> and click on Kalaikalanjiam / Tamil Encyclopedia.</span></span></font></div>
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