I am the ODP editor chang, real name Chengappa. I find myself in the
unexpected position of having found what I thought would be a private
email from me, here reproduced in a public forum.
First comments. I've had two emails so far as a result of this thread,
apart from those from Hari Prasad Nadig (HPN). Thanks to the person who
sent a useful and constructive email. To the person who emailed me to
say there were 'vulgar and blatant' errors in the ODP Kannada section,
I've never suggested to anyone that I was competent in Kannada. 4 years
or more ago, I posted a message in soc.culture.indian.karnataka
<news:soc.culture.indian.karnataka> , asking for someone to volunteer to
set this up. That produced one enquiry, and no further active input.
I've also written privately to three strangers who I thought might be
interested, and I've tried to persuade some of my relations in India to
take on the work. None of this has been successful. My knowledge of
Kannada is restricted to a couple of years learning at primary school
level, and I am aware that my competence is minimal. I intended, and
could only hope to provide a basic public ODP category to attract
attention and interest. The results might be vulgar, but there are
better answers than to criticise me for not doing things beyond my ability.
But it is is good that there is active participation now. Hopefully this
will increase, and this category will improve.
Clarifications of some comments in previous posts.
1.
The ODP has no font problem. The Kannada section is all in
unicode, and has always been. The only current font problem is
that on my internet facing machine, and I have had this only
recently (since installing Suse Linux 9.3 ). I can no longer see
any Kannada text. The 'issue' derives from a misunderstanding of
my email, which on reading again, perhaps was not clearly written.
HPN wrote to me suggesting changes of names, and included the
suggestions written in Kannada unicode. All that the message was
intended to say, was that my reply to HPN would include the
Kannada names written in simplified itrans.
2.
the 'kriiDe is ok' comment. The comments were made in response to
HPN's prior email, which he has not posted, and they need to be
seen in context of this. This email of his suggests some name
changes; aaTe to aaTagaLu for instance, and you can see my
agreement or questions on these changes. But it did not suggest
any changes for kale, kriide, vignaanya, and others, and that is
what I was seeking to confirm when I said 'kriide is ok', et.c.
3.
The misreading of praadeeshika as draadeeshika was just that,
literally a misreading. It came about after saving the email from
HPN on another PC. On this machine, with WinXP, Firefox and
Kannada fonts, the underlining of hyperlinks goes through the
middle of the letter, not underneath. I've tried again since with
IE6 and it is better.
4.
The current World category exists under the ODP's root only, as
http://dmoz.org/World., and houses all other language settings.
This displays it in the English section of course, but it is there
to keep the directory structure. There is no need for an
equivalent 'World' category in any language. Cross referencing of
directory categories is available across all languages with 'this
category in other languages' links. Whether the English word
Regional can be adequately translated as Vishwa is something I'm
not well placed to judge.
5.
There is no miscellaneous type category at the root of any
language. In general, the ODP does not use such category anywhere
if it can possibly be helped.
I feel that there may be some other misunderstandings here, but these
may be removed after HPN has had some time to become fully acquainted
with ODP culture and guidelines. Despite the negative publicity the ODP
gets, mainly because of its antagonistic relationship with the SEO
industry, it is a successful, productive and functioning organisation.
Thank you for your other comments, I'll take them on board. I've to go
back to real life now.