[Oriya-group] Update on Rebati project: Dec. 15th, 2004

[Gora Mohanty]

Hello,
  As it is getting close to six months since the
Rebati project was started,
the time is perhaps appropriate for an evaluation and
a soul-searching. We
have been only moderately successful in our primary
goal of an open-source
desktop localized to Oriya. About 25% of the files in
the GNOME desktop (for
versions 2.6, 2.8 and 2.10) have been submitted or are
awaiting submission
after a preliminary vetting. A large fraction of the
remainder of the files
have been translated on paper, and data entry of these
will commence soon. So,
while we should have a first look at a complete
desktop in the near future,
our review and testing has been woefully inadequate.
  We have been even less successful in the technical
end of things, mainly due
to our inability to create a sustained interest in the
project among faculty
and students in engineering colleges and technical
institutes. While many
areas that need technical expertise have been
identified, they are not being
tackled due to a lack of manpower. While we did manage
to get the basic
technical requirements in place, and it is now
possible to edit and save Oriya
text in a simple editor (with spellchecking soon to be
available), and things
like Oriya-enabled web browsers (soon email clients,
too) and database entry
tools are available, this is still far from our aims.
  Perhaps our biggest failure has been the inability
to create and sustain an
excitement about the project, so that we could have a
steady stream of
participants committed to the idea of open-source
computing in Oriya. While we
are trying some ways to remedy this state of things,
no simple solutions are
visible to us. We invite your ideas in this regard, so
please post them to
this forum, or bring them to the Dec. 19th, 2004
meeting at Srujanika (see
other post about this).

Regards,
Gora


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