From: Srujanika 	To: odiabhasapratisthan@yahoo.co.in 
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 9:44 AM 		Subject: June 28-29 workshop 
Dear Sebak babu, 
1. Thank you for the invitation to join the workshop on Oriya computing. Coincidentally, we are also holding a review/public meeting on the Computing resouces in Oriya and Assamese languages as applicable to Linux/FLOSS, which had been scheduled since a long time. Still I would like to join your workshop for some time and hope that it would be permissible. We would be releasing the first drafts of an 18,000 word Oriya-Oriya dictionary and a 7000 word English-Oriya technical glossary during the meeting on the 29th. This will be a public work-in-progress open for all to contribute and is expected to see completion by the end of 2009. Details of this work are posted in all online discussion forums relating to Oriya computing. 
2. The background note deals primarily with the linguistic aspect of the problem and is a most welcome step. However, it may not be realistic to expect reasonable results over a two-day period with a limited participation. It would be better to treat the deliberations as a beginning and allow some specified amount of time for its maturation. 
3. My interest and limited abilities lie in the direction of Oriya language computing. But your note/programme gives little information on what is likely to be discussed in this context. From the news-reports of your earlier meeting I gather that some software companies are complaining about the lack of progress on the software development front is due to the non-standardisation of Oriya alphabet set. The companies named in these reports are not known for any work on basic aspects of language computing. At the most they might be seeking to develop Oriya language user interface for their applications. For this adequate standardisation exists and is being used by interested parties, especially the free software community. In fact it is wrong to speak of an absence of standards. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has a set of standards (which we feel is a true reflection of the current Oriya lingustic situation) based on which the ISCII 91 has been developed by CDAC for the GIST and other basic software. ISCII 91 has been absorbed into the Unicode system and is further supplemented in the current Unicode version 5.1. There different opinions on minor points, but these would be debated and either implimented or rejected in due course of time. All software standards change with time and it has never hindered the development process, because there are always inbuilt provisions for transition to the newer version. 
I may state in this connection that since 2004, when the first Oriya Unicode font OriUni1/Utkal and the Rebati-Gnome glossary was developed by the opensource community (please see http://oriya.sarovar.org ), a fair amount of progress has been made. Several free Oriya Unicode fonts are available now and input and rendering of Oriya characters are nearly perfect on Linux. In fact, the recent versions of Fedora Core comes with an installable Oriya interface. All other Linux distributions using the Gnome desktop have Oriya-language packs available for free download. Thus, as the former President Kalam was advocating strongly, the Govt. should go for opensource solutions and the commercial efforts will follow their market. Also, an important first step in this direction would be to make available freely the softwares claimed to have been developed by public-funded projects at OCAC/Utkal University. No one expects these to be perfect, but these can form th foundation for futher development without duplication of efforts. 
I am making these general observations in the absence of any specific terms of reference in your invitation. I hope this will give you an idea of my thinking, which also reflects that of the opensource community in general. We will always be working towards advancing Oriya language computing and would welcome any serious effort from the Government to join hands. 
Please send me any further information you can on the proposed discussions relating to computing (I tried your website for this, but it could not be accessed) and oblige. 
Regards, 
N. M. Pattnaik 
Dr. Nikhil Mohan Pattnaik, 
"Srujanika"
Jagamara, PO: Khandagiri,
Bhubaneswar 751030
Orissa 
Tel: (0674) 2350664 / 2350640 
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