[Debian-in-workers] Re: Fwd: debian-in-workers@lists.alioth.debian.org; pravi.a@gmail.com; anivar@hackemail.com; vimaljoseph@gmail.com

[Hussain KH]

Respected Sir

We are grateful for your timely action of including Rachana Font in the
Debian distribution. It took nearly 6 years to complete the designing of the
Rachana Glyphs. In January 2005 I successfully compiled the Rachana OTF and
in May 2005 we declared it as GNU-GPL. Since I was ignorant of the
formalities of the complete procedure of making GNU-GPL some confusion
arose. Now with the help of You and Mr. Soumyadeep our efforts will finally
reach the people who really owns the languages and its characters.

We started our language campaign called 'Rachana' (which means Graceful
Writing) in 1999. It was mainly for resurrecting the original script which
existed for two centuries in writing and printing before seventies. Original
Malayalam Script had more than 900 beautiful conjuncts (ligatures) which we
eventually lost when truncated and modified for typewriters in seventies.
Rachana argued that the original script is not only beautiful but the most
functional one for digital computing. After 7 years of campaigning and
designing the Rachana font which is the exhaustive collection of characters
and glyphs of our mother tongue our arguments have been widely accepted. New
students and practitioners of IT in our state (Kerala, the southernmost
state of India with 30 million population), especially those in the Free
Software Movement (GNU-Linux)  are very fond of Rachana font. Official
inclusion of the Rachana Font in Debian, thanks to you, will be a boost to
their meaningful efforts.

Since we are a very informal group consisting of 6 persons and not having
any external funding we couldn't yet launch our own website. Friends of
Rachana (Mr. Anvar, Praveen, Vimal, Vivek, etc. who are working for
Debian Malayalam localisation) have assured me yesterday to find an apt site
to put the font for downloading by anyone.

Rachana font is still in an evolving state mainly for three reasons: 1) new
Unicode standards are expected to come soon for Malayalam. So revised
compilation is a must in the future. 2) We are mining the old manuscripts
for special/unique/historic/archaic characters and symbols and in future
many more glyphs are to be designed. 3) Many feed backs we receive from the
user community about the shape, features, aesthetics, etc.  Rachana movement
is dedicated to perfect our font and  this will be in par with your
suggestion "to update the font regularly".

Free Software Movement and GNU-LInux have got a great future in Kerala. Six
months ago our State Government have taken a historic decision to teach
Linux only for nearly 1.5 million high school students instead of Microsoft
OS. Nearly half a million students join in this array every year. The
movement is called it at school. And it will be a fitting reward for Rachana
also that we too can share this greatness through Debian.

The current efforts to localise Malayalam in Debian will have far reaching
results in the Kerala State. More than education its impact will be social
and political. Yes, it is indeed a part of the march towards the "other
world" propagated by World Social Forum.

Thanking you on behalf of Rachana and our friends, and expecting more
support from you for Malayalam Linux

Hussain, KH


On 12/19/06, Christian Perrier <bubulle at debian.org> wrote:
>
> Hussain KH a écrit :
> > Respected Christian Perrier
> >
> > I'm here by forwarding the mail I sent to Mr. Saumya Pradeep regarding
> > the inclusion of Rachana font in the Debian distribution. As a reply I
> > received mail from Saumya that he is now fully convinced of the
> > Technical and historical importance of Rachana font as well its
> > GNU-GPL status.
> >
> > As I put in the following mail I would like to repeat "*we here by
> > declare that any one can use/modify/distribute it under GNU GPL."*
> > *
> > *Please go through the attached article by Dr. Mammen Chundamannil
> > that fully explains our stands and aspirations towards free software
> > movement and GNU-GPL
> >
> > Expecting necessary actions to be taken in order to make use of
> > Rachana font in the Malayalam localisation of Debian,
> >
> > Thanking in anticipation
> >
> > Yours faithfully
> >
> > Hussain KH
> > (Rachana Font Designer and Project Co-ordinator)
> >
> >
>
> OK. That seems to definitely clarify the situation, thanks for taking
> time to get and write the answer.
>
> Indeed, I already included the new Rachana_w01.otf font in the
> ttf-malayalam-fonts package on behalf of Soumyadip, the real maintainer
> of the package.
>
> One last step that would be interesting is getting a reliable location
> for new releases downloads so that the maintainer(s) of the package
> which includes these fonts can update them regularly as long as they're
> enhanced.
>
> I'm still incredibly amazed by the progress of the free software
> movement all around India, in all its language communities. Seeing this
> from very far and even with my very limited knowledge of many parts of
> the socio-economical (and political...) situation in your country, I'm
> incredibly impressed. All this confirms that the personal investment I
> put into a better support for South-Asia languages in Debian and
> Debian-derived distributions has not been done in vain. This is
> incredibly motivating, indeed.
>
>
>
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