Language CD Initiatives
Multilingual computing is the cornerstone of growth of the Internet and information access by citizens in their own languages. To achieve this object, Government of India has taken proactive steps to accelerate the reach of Indian language computing usage by making available free local language software tools and fonts so that the large segment of users who are not fully comfortable and conversant with English (90% of the population) get benefitted. This is expected to pay the dividends to kick off IT revolution in the country, increase PC and internet penetration, increase Indian Language contents and enable applications (such as e-governance, education etc.) to be available to a wide range of users in daily life.
Under the aegis of TDIL programme, DeitY, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, a major initiative called National Rollout Plan to aggregate these software tools and to make these available through a web based Indian Language Data Centre (ILDC) was launched in collaboration with C-DAC. In this plan user friendly software tools and fonts in all 22 official languages viz. Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu have been made available free for public through language CDs and web downloads for the benefit of masses. Continuous updates are also being undertaken which are compatible with new operating systems.
It is a set of various softwares which enables user to do various tasks in Indian Languages. For the sake of convenience of the users the softwares in the CD are divided into three categories.
Tools for Desktop users
1. Unicode complaint keyboard driver
2. Unicode compliant open type fonts
3. Localized version of Libre Office
Tools for Internet Users and
4. Localized version of Mozila Firefox
5. Localized version of Thunderbird(Email client) with Lightening plugin(Calender)
6. Localized version of Pidgin (Universal chat client)
Other Utilities.
7. Localized version of GNUCash
8. Localized version of Inkscape
9. Localized version of Tuxpaint
10. Localized version of Joomla
- Easy installation
- Fonts complaint to Unicode version 6.0 added to the CD
- The unicode version 6.0 support by Unicode typing tool
- Supported on Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit) / Windows Vista (32 & 64 bit) / Windows xp (32 bit).
- New localized utilities such as GNUCash (Accounting Software), Inkscape (Graphics Designing Software), Tuxpaint (Drawing software for children), Joomla (Content management system).
Following tasks can be accomplished using the softwares given in the Language software CD :
- Create data / contents in local language by using any application such as Libre Office, Notepad, MS Office or any other Unicode compatible applications.
- Send Emails in local language.
- Chat with others over internet in local language.
- User can browse various web sites and do any other internet related activity by using the web browser.
- Maintain accounting information for individuals, small-scale industries/ organizations.
- Design and create all kinds of graphics.
- Children can use the software for creating some funny pictures and drawings.
- One can create simple to very powerful websites, web portals in Indian languages.
To get the free Indian Language Software & Tools CD, user needs to fill a simple registration form at http://ildc.in mentioning the complete postal address. The CD will be dispatched to users address free of cost. User can also directly download the tools of his own interest from http://ildc.in.