Dear friends,
We are happy to share the newsletter for July. This includes updates from the work we are associated with, and updates about the Rio Olympics edit-a-thon that is being organised by our friends from Wikimedia India.
Open source effort gives indigenous language an official typeface
Santali, an aboriginal South Asian language, has a brand new freely licensed font and set of cross-platform open source input tools on the way. The typeface family was designed by type designer Pooja Saxena (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anexasajoop) and went through several rounds of review by language experts. However, the typeface (https://github.com/anexasajoop/olchiki-fontfamily) is still one step away from reality. Because of this, two input methods (https://github.com/GuruGomke/ol-chiki) will be made available along with the typeface; Sarjom Baha (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector/Inp…) , a phonetic input method so that every common user can easily type the they pronounce the words, and InScript (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ol_Chiki_InScript_keyboard_layout.s…) , a keyboard layout standard for Indian scripts. Even though the original plan was to create a editor community to contribute to
the Santali Wikipedia (https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/sat/Main_Page) and bring it live from Incubator, outputs will just be distributed for the users to use them.
Update: The input methods (https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/tree/master/rules/sat) are now up on all the Wikimedia projects as part of the Universal Language Selector (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector) .
. . . Check the blog (http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/opensource.com-subhashish-panigrahi-july-8-2…) and the project page for more details of the Ol chiki project.
== Event announcements ==
Event announcements and press releases:
* Tools orientation session for Telugu Wikimedians of Hyderabad (http://cis-india.org/openness/events/tools-orientation-session-for-telugu-w…) (10 July 2016)
A tools orientation session is being organised on July 10 at Hyderabad during the regular monthly meetup. Telugu Wikimedians who would be interested to learn about advanced editing tools like citation templates and Twinkle are welcome to join.
== Ongoing events ==
* India At Rio Olympics 2016 edit-a-thon (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMIN/Events/India_At_Rio_Olympics_2016_Edit…) (July 29 - September 18). Organised by Wikimedia India and participated by Indic language Wikimedia communities.
18 language Wikipedia communities, including English, are expected to take part and 12 of these have coordinators to help their community to participate in the edit-a-thon.
== Programme reports ==
Outreach, education programme and community engagement programme reports:
* Subray, Ananth. "Edit-a-thon to improve Kannada-language science-related Wikipedia articles (http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/edit-a-thon-to-improve-kannada-langu…) (14 July 2016)
We have been working with the Department of State Educational Research and Training of Karnataka (DSERT), a Government of Karnataka-run research and training institution headquartered in Bengaluru. With the hope of expanding the reach of Science-related content in Kannada Wikipedia, we organised an edit-a-thon spanning over three days from the 11th January through the 13th.
* Garule, Abhinav. "Training-the-trainer programme and Mediawiki training at Pune (http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/training-the-trainer-programme-and-m…) (17 August 2016)
A two-day long train-the-trainer and Mediawiki training programme was organised during May 28-29 in Pune to better capacity of Wikimedians both technically, and outreach and community building. In this report, learn more about the experience of Santoshi Tiwari, a Wikimedian who travelled from the city of Nashik to participate in this event.
* Santhosh S., Pavan. Tools orientation for Telugu Wikimedians at Hyderabad (http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/tools-orientation-for-telugu-wikimed…) (31 July 2016)
To help Wikimedians learn about essential tools that are used across Wikimedia projects, a tools orientation session was organised on July 10 during the monthly meetup at Hyderabad. We have attempted to capture the experience and inputs of long time Telugu Wikimedians Rajashekhar and Murali Mohan in this report.
== Articles/blogs ==
Articles, opinion pieces, analysis pieces:
* K.T., Dhanalakshmi. "ತರಬೇತಿ ಮಾಡಲು ತರಬೇತಿಗೊಂಡಾಗ.... CIS-A2K TTT 2016 (http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ca4cb0cacca4cbf-caecbeca1cb2cc1-ca4cb0cacca4…) ". CIS blog (12 June 2016)
Dhanalakshmi, a student from St Agnes College, Mangaluru, who was a participant of TTT 2016 has blogged her experience at Train-the-Trainer 2016 event organized by the Centre for Internet & Society earlier this year.
* Panigrahi, Subhashish. Open source effort gives indigenous language an official typeface (http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/opensource.com-subhashish-panigrahi-july-8-2…) (8 July 2016)
Santali, an aboriginal South Asian language, has a brand new freely licensed font and set of cross-platform open source input tools on the way.
== Media coverage ==
Events and activities that we have organised or participated in:
* Prasad, Anant. "The Digital Oxygen for Odia Language (http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/my-city-links-july-4-2016-digital-oxygen-for-…) (4 July 2016)
If you want to receive news from this program, please sign-up here (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/Subscribe) .
This newsletter is also available on Meta-wiki at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/July_2016
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K)
Centre for Internet and Society
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