Centre for Internet and Society

State of Odia Language in Computing and Future Steps

subha — 2014-07-28T07:03:46Z

I participated in a "National Level Seminar on, Computer Application and Odia Language" organized by the Institute of Odia Studies and Research in Bhubaneswar on July 6, 2014 as a panelist to discuss about the state of Odia language in computing, work in progress highlighting CIS-A2K's work in the knowledge and education sector and further steps.

I wrote an article on this for the Sovereign. This can be downloaded here. The invitation for the seminar can be viewed here.

କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଓଡିଆ ଭାଷାର ସ୍ଥିତି ଓ ଭବିଷ୍ୟତ ପଦକ୍ଷେପ

ଓଡ଼ିଆ: କାଲି ଓ ଆଜି

କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ବ୍ୟବହାର ଆରମ୍ଭ ହେବାର ଦଶନ୍ଧିଟିଏ ବିତିଯାଇଛି । ଏ ଦଶନ୍ଧିର ଶେଷ ଆଡ଼କୁ ଏହି ବର୍ଷ ଫେବ୍ରୁଆରି ୨୦ ତାରିଖରେ ଉଲ୍ଲେଖନୀୟ ଘଟଣାଟିଏ ଘଟିଲା - ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ଷଷ୍ଠ ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷା ଭାବେ ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ମାନ୍ୟତା ପାଇଲା । ସାଧାରଣ ମଣିଷର ମାନସିକତା ଦୋହଲେ ଅଦିନିଆ ଝଡ଼ି କିମ୍ବା ନଈ କୂଳ ଲଙ୍ଘିଲେ । ଏ ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ମାନ୍ୟତା ପାଇବା ଥିଲା ସେମିତି ମନ-ଦୋହଲେଇବା ଭଳି ଘଟଣାଟିଏ । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ପଢ଼ୁଥିବା ପିଲାଙ୍କ ମନରେ ଅଧିକ ଚାକିରି ପାଇବାର ନୂଆ ନୂଆ ଆଶାଟିଏ ଗଜୁରିଲା । ଘରୁ ଫେରିଥିବା ପ୍ରବାସୀ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଦୋକାନୀଟିଏ ବେଙ୍ଗାଳୁରୁ ସହରରେ ଥିବା ତା' ଜଳଖିଆ ଦୋକାନ ଆଗରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ନାମଫଳକଟିଏ ଲଗାଇଲା । ନିର୍ବାଚନରେ ବୋଧେ ପ୍ରଥମଥର ରାଜନୈତିକ ଦଳଟିଏ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବିଶ୍ୱବିଦ୍ୟାଳୟର ଯୋଜନା ନିର୍ବାଚନ ଇସ୍ତାହାରରେ ସାମିଲ କଲା । ଫେସବୁକରେ, ୱେବସାଇଟରେ ଅନେକ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଏ ଆନନ୍ଦର ଉତ୍ସବ ପାଳନ କଲେ । ତେବେ ଏ ସବୁରି ଆମୋଦ ଭିତରେ ବେଳ ଆସିଛି ଆମ ଏ ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆକୁ ଆଧୁନିକ ଜ୍ଞାନକୌଶଳର ତରାଜୁରେ ତଉଲିବା । ଆମ ଭାଷା ଗୋଟେ ପୁରାତନ ଭାଷା, ଆଉ ତା'ର ମାନେ ନୁହେଁ ଯେ ସେ କେବଳ ହାତୀଗୁମ୍ଫାର କାନ୍ଥରେ କିବା ଗୁଡ଼ହାଣ୍ଡିରେ ଲୁଚିରହିବ ଶିଉଳି ଗହଣରେ । ଭାଷାର ଅତୀତ ଯେତେ ପରିପୁଟ, ତା'ର ଅଧୁନା ବ୍ୟବହାରୀଙ୍କ ଉପରେ ନିର୍ଭର କରେ ସେ କେଉଁ ଦିଗରେ ମୁହାଁଇବ - କେବଳ ପୁରାତନ ଭାଷାର ମାନ୍ୟତା ପାଇ ଜେଜେ ହୋଇ କଣ ଘରେ ବସିରହି ଦିନ ଗଣିବ, ନାଁ ଆଧୁନିକ କୌଶଳକୁ ଆପଣେଇ ଆହୁରି ଅଧିକ ବ୍ୟବହାରରେ ଲାଗିବ । ଏକ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ସବୁଠାରୁ ବଡ଼ ସମ୍ପତ୍ତିଟି ହେଉଛି ତାକୁ ଦୈନନ୍ଦିନ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରୁଥିବା ଲୋକେ, ବିଶେଷ କରି ତା'କୁ ପଠନ ଓ ଲିଖନରେ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରୁଥିବା ଲୋକେ । ଏ ମୋବାଇଲ, କମ୍ପୁଟର ଓ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟର ଯୁଗରେ ଆମ ଭାଷା ଯଦି ଇଂରାଜୀ ସହ ତାଳ ମିଳାଇ ଚାଲି ନ ପାରୁଛି ତାହେଲେ ଆଗାମୀ ପିଢ଼ିଟି ଯେ ଆମ ଭାଷାକୁ ସମ୍ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ପାଶୋରି ନ ପକାଇବ ତାହା ଲେଖକ ହଲପ କରି କହିପାରେ । ଆମ ଭାଷାର ଆଧୁନିକତାର ସ୍ଥିତି ନିର୍ଦ୍ଧାରଣ କରିବା ଓ ଚଳିତ କାମମାନଙ୍କ ବିଷୟରେ ଜାଣି ଆଗାମୀ ଦିନମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଯୋଜନାର ରୂପରେଖ ତିଆରିବା ବୋଧେ ଏ ବେଳର ପ୍ରଥମ କାମ ।

ଓଡ଼ିଆ କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ବ୍ୟବହାର ଉପଯୋଗୀ ହେଲା ଟିକେ ବିଳମ୍ବରେ, ଏକବିଂଶ ଶତାବ୍ଦୀର କିଛି ବର୍ଷ ଆଗରୁ । ବାକି ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷା ସେତେବେଳକୁ କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ଦେଖିବାକୁ ମିଳିଲାଣି । ପ୍ରାରମ୍ଭିକ କାମ ଥିଲା ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ଟାଇପ କରି ଲେଖିବା ଓ ଆଗର ବ୍ଲକ ଟାଇପିଙ୍ଗ ବଦଳରେ ସହଜରେ ଡିଟିପି କରି ଅଳ୍ପ ସମୟରେ ଛପାଇବା । ସେ ବେଳରେ ସେ ଥିଲା ଗୋଟେ ବିରାଟ ସଫଳତା । ତିଆରି ହୋଇଥିଲା ନାନାଦି ଫଣ୍ଟ (font) । ଫଣ୍ଟ ହେଉଚି କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ଏକ ଲିପିର ଅକ୍ଷର ସଜାଣି । ଆଉ ସବୁ ଫଣ୍ଟ ଦେଖିବାକୁ ଅଲଗା ଅଲଗା । ତେବେ ଆରମ୍ଭରେ ତିଆରି ହୋଇଥିବା ଫଣ୍ଟସବୁ ତିଆରି ହୋଇଥିଲା ଏକା ଢାଞ୍ଚାରେ - ଇଂରାଜୀ ବା ଲାଟିନ ପରିବାରର ଅକ୍ଷରସବୁର ବଦଳରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷର ଖଞ୍ଜାଯାଇଥିଲା । ଯାହା ଫଳରେ କିବୋର୍ଡ଼ରେ ଇଂରାଜୀ ଅକ୍ଷରଟିଏ ଟାଇପ କଲେ ଆସୁଥିଲା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷର । ତେବେ ଏକାଧିକ ଫଣ୍ଟ ନିର୍ମାତା ଭିନ୍ନ ଭିନ୍ନ ମାନକ ତିଆରି କରିବା ଫଳରେ ଅନେକ ଗୁଡ଼ିଏ ମାନକର ଫଣ୍ଟ - ଯେଉଁମାନଙ୍କର ନିଜ ନିଜ ଭିତରେ ତାଳମେଳ ନ ଥିଲା - ତିଆରି ହେବାରେ ଲାଗିଲା । ତେଣୁ ଅମୁକ ଫଣ୍ଟରେ ଲେଖା ପାଠ ସମୁକ ଫଣ୍ଟରେ ପଢ଼ିବା ଦୁରୂହ ହୋଇପଡ଼ିଲା । ତେବେ ଅଧିକାଂଶ ଛାପା ଓ ପ୍ରକାଶନ ସଂସ୍ଥା ଆକୃତି ନାମକ ସଫ୍ଟଓଏରଟିଏ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରୁଥିବାରୁ ଅଲଗା କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ଟାଇପ ହୋଇଥିବା ପାଠ ଭିତରେ ଗୋଟେ ପ୍ରକାର ସମାନତା ଥିଲା । ତେବେ ଏସବୁ ଫଣ୍ଟରେ ଲେଖା ପାଠକୁ ନାଁ ଇମେଲରେ କାହାକୁ ପଠାଇହେଉଥିଲା, ନାଁ ୱେବସାଇଟରେ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରିହେଉଥିଲା, ନାଁ ଗୁଗଲରେ ଖୋଜି ହେଉଥିଲା । ଏହି ସବୁ ଅସୁବିଧାକୁ ସୁଧାରିବା ପାଇଁ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ ଫଣ୍ଟ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରାଗଲା । ଏହା ଥିଲା ଅଣ-ଲାଟିନ ଲିପିମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଏକ ବରଦାନ । ଏଥିରେ ସବୁ ଲାଟିନ/ଇଂରାଜୀ ଅକ୍ଷର ସହିତ ସବୁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷର ମଧ୍ୟ ରହୁଥିଲା । ଆଉ ଏ ଥିଲା ଏକ ବିଶ୍ୱସ୍ତରୀୟ ମାନକ । ଅର୍ଥାତ କେବଳ ଦୁଇଟି ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଫଣ୍ଟ ଭିତରେ ସମାନତା ନୁହେଁ, ଓଡ଼ିଆ-ଗୁଜୁରାଟୀ ଭିତରେ ମଧ୍ୟ ସମାନତା ରହିଲା । ତେବେ ଆମର ପ୍ରକାଶନ ସଂସ୍ଥାମାନ ଏହାକୁ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରିବା ପାଇଁ ମଙ୍ଗିଲେ ନାହିଁ । କାରଣ ଥିଲା ସେମାନେ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରୁଥିବା ଡିଟିପି ସଫ୍ଟଓଏର (ଆଡୋବି ପେଜମେକର, କ୍ୱାର୍କ ଏକ୍ସପ୍ରେସ ଆଦି)ରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ରେ ଯୁକ୍ତାକ୍ଷର ଆଦି ଠିକରେ କାମ କରୁନଥିଲା । ଏଣୁ ଲକ୍ଷ ଲକ୍ଷ ପୃଷ୍ଠା ବହିର ମଲାଟ ତଳୁ ବାହାରି କମ୍ପୁଟର ଓ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟର ପାଠକମାନଙ୍କ ପଢ଼ାହେବାରୁ ବଞ୍ଚିତ ହେଲା । ଏହାର ଗୋଟେ ବାଟ ଥିଲା ଡିଟିପି ପାଇଁ ବ୍ୟବହୃତ ଫଣ୍ଟକୁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ରେ ରୂପାନ୍ତର କରି ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଇବା । ବିଡ଼ମ୍ବନା ଏହିକି ଯେ, ଆମ ଖବରକାଗଜମାନେ ତା' ନ କରି ଆପଣେଇଲେ ଲେଖାକୁ ଛବି କରି ନିଜ ୱେବସାଇଟରେ, ଆଉ ଥୋକେ ଡାଇନାମିକ ଫଣ୍ଟ ନାମକ ଆଉ ଏକ ପନ୍ଥା ଧରିଲେ । ଛବି ହେଲେ ଲେଖା ସବୁ ଯେ ଖୋଜିହେବ ନାହିଁ କିବା ଆଉ କେଉଁ କାମରେ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରିହେବ ନାହିଁ ତାହା କହିବା ବାହୁଲ୍ୟ । ଡାଇନାମିକ ଫଣ୍ଟରେ ମୂଳ ସର୍ଭରରୁ ଫଣ୍ଟଟିଏ ଲୋଡ଼ ହେଇଥାଏ, ଯାହା ଫଳରେ ପାଠକର କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ସେ ଫଣ୍ଟଟି ନ ଥିଲେ ମଧ୍ୟ ସେ ପଢ଼ିପାରେ । କିନ୍ତୁ ନାଁ ସେ ଲେଖାକୁ କପି କରି କାମରେ ଲଗାଇହୁଏ ନାଁ ଗୁଗଲ ସର୍ଚରେ ସେ ଆସେ । ଓଡ଼ିଶାର ପ୍ରାୟ ସମସ୍ତ ପ୍ରକାଶିତ ପାଠ ଭିତରୁ ଅଧା ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଆସେ ନାହିଁ, ଆଉ ଅଧକ ଆସେ ଏମିତିକା ମୃତ ଫରମାଟରେ ଯେ ତା'କୁ ଆଉ କେହି କାମରେ ଲଗାଇପାରିବେ ନାହିଁ । ଯଦି ପାଠକଟିଏ ନିଜ ମୋବାଇଲ କି କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ଅବାଧରେ ନିଜ ଭାଷା ପଢ଼ିନପାରୁଛି ତାହେଲେ ସେ କେମିତି ଯେ ଭାଷାକୁ ଜାବୁଡ଼ି ଧରିବ ତାହା ଆଲୋଚନାର ବିଷୟ । ପାଠ ବଢ଼ିଲେ ପାଠକମାନଙ୍କୁ ଅଧିକ ପଠନର ସୁଯୋଗ ମିଳିବ, ବିକଳ୍ପ ମିଳିବ ବାଛିବା ପାଇଁ ନିଜ ପସନ୍ଦର ବହିଟିଏ । ଆଉ ତା ଯଦି ହୁଏ ସୁବିଧାରେ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରିହେଉଥିବା ଭଳି ସାଧନରେ ତାହେଲେ ଇଂରାଜୀ ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ପଢ଼ୁଥିବା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଘରର ପିଲାଟି ବି ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ପଢ଼ିବାକୁ ଆଗଭର ହେବ ।

ଉପରେ ବର୍ଣ୍ଣିତ ଅସୁବିଧା - ଅଣ-ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ରୁ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼କୁ ଫଣ୍ଟ ରୂପାନ୍ତର କରିବାର ସାଧନଟି ପ୍ରଥମେ ୨୦୧୧ରେ ସୃଜନିକା ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନ ଦ୍ୱାରା ଲୋକମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଖୋଲାରେ ବିତରଣ କରାଯାଇଥିଲା ରେବତୀ ନାମକ କନଭର୍ଟର ଦେଇ । ତେବେ ସେ ସଫ୍ଟଓଏରଟି ମଧ୍ୟ ରକ୍ଷଣାବେକ୍ଷଣା ଅଭାବରୁ ପୁରୁଣା ହୋଇଗଲା ଆଉ ନିକଟ ଅତୀତରେ ଆଉ କିଛି ବନ୍ଧୁଙ୍କ ସହ ମିଶି ଲେଖକ ଏକାଧିକ ଆକୃତି ସାରଳା ଫଣ୍ଟ ତଥା ଶ୍ରୀଲିପି ନାମକ ଆଉ ଏକ ଫଣ୍ଟରୁ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ ରୂପାନ୍ତର ପାଇଁ କନଭର୍ଟର ତିଆରି କରିଛନ୍ତି । ଆକୃତି ସାରଳା କନଭର୍ଟରଟି http://bitly.com/akrutiodia ରେ ଓ ଶ୍ରୀଲିପି କନଭର୍ଟରଟି http://bitly.com/shreelipi ୱେବସାଇଟରେ ଉଭୟ ଅନଲାଇନ ଓ ଅଫଲାଇନରେ ବ୍ୟବହାର ପାଇଁ ସମ୍ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ମାଗଣାରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ । ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟର ଭାଷା ହେଲା ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼, ତାକୁ ଆଦରିଲେ ଆମ ଭାଷାର ସ୍ଥିତି ଯେ ନାହିଁରୁ କାହିଁ ହେବ ତାହା କହିବା ଏ ବିବରଣର ଅତିରଞ୍ଜନ ମାତ୍ର ହେବ ।

ଏ ତ ଗଲା ଫଣ୍ଟ-ଜନିତ ଅସୁବିଧା କଥା । ଏବେ ଆମର ବହିସବୁରେ କି କି ପ୍ରତିବନ୍ଧକ ରହିଛି ତାହା ବିଚାରିବା । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାରେ ଏଯାବତ ଲକ୍ଷାଧିକ ବହି ଲେଖାଯାଇଥିବ । ସେସବୁ ଭିତରୁ କେତେ ଯେ ଉପାଦେୟ ବହି ଅଛି ଆଉ ଅଚିରେ ଏସବୁ ପାଇବାର ବାଟ ଯେ ଅମଡ଼ା ଏକଥାରେ ବୋଧେ ପାଠକେ ଏକମତ ହେବେ । ଆମ ବହିସବୁ ଯଦି ଡିଜିଟାଲ ଲାଇବ୍ରେରି ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ଖୋଲାରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ହୁଅନ୍ତା ତାହେଲେ ଜ୍ଞାନଲାଭର ପଥ ସୁଗମ ହୋଇପାରନ୍ତା । ବହି ସବୁ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଇବାର ସୁବିଧା ବାଟଟିଏ ହେଲା ସେସବୁକୁ ଲେଖା ବା ଟେକ୍ସଟ ରୂପରେ ରଖିବା । ଲେଖାକୁ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ଯୋଗେ ଖୋଜିହେବ, ପୁନର୍ବ୍ୟବହାର କରିହେବ ଆଉ ବିତରଣ ମଧ୍ୟ କରିହେବ । ଆଉ ଏକ ବାଟ ହେଲା ବହିକୁ ସ୍କାନ କରି ପିଡିଏଫ ରୂପରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରିହେବ । ପିଡିଏଫ ବହିସବୁ ପଢ଼ିହେଉଥିଲେ ହେଁ ଖୋଜିବା ଆଉ ପୁନର୍ବ୍ୟବହାର କରିବା ପାଖାପାଖି ଅସମ୍ଭବ । ତେବେ ଡିଟିପି ହୋଇଥିବା ବହିକୁ ଫଣ୍ଟ କନଭର୍ଟର ସାହାଯ୍ୟରେ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ରେ ରୂପାନ୍ତର କରିହେବ ଯାହା ବହିକୁ ସ୍କାନ କରି ପିଡିଏଫ ତିଆରିଲେ ହୋଇପାରିବ ନାହିଁ । ନ୍ୟାସନାଲ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚ୍ୟୁଟ ଅଫ ରାଉରକେଲାର ମିଳିତ ସହଯୋଗରେ ୧୯୫୦ ମସିହା ଯାଏ ଛପା ହୋଇଥିବା ୭୪୦ ଖଣ୍ଡ ଉପାଦେୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବହିକୁ ସୃଜନିକା ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନ ତରଫରୁ ସ୍କାନ କରାଯାଇଛି । ଏଥି ମଧ୍ୟରୁ ୨୪୦ ଖଣ୍ଡ ବହି oaob.nitrkl.ac.in ରେ ଡାଉନଲୋଡ଼ ପାଇଁ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ । ତେବେ ବହିସବୁ ପ୍ରକାଶକଙ୍କ ଅନୁମତି ବିନା ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ରଖିବା କପିରାଇଟ ଆଇନର ଉଲ୍ଲଙ୍ଘନ । ନିକଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ତରଫରୁ ଆୟୋଜିତ "ଓଡ଼ିଶା ଦିବସ ୨୦୧୪" ଅବସରରେ ଭାଷାବିଦ ପଦ୍ମଶ୍ରୀ ଦେବୀପ୍ରସନ୍ନ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ ଓ ଭାଷା ଗବେଷକ ସୁବ୍ରତ ପୃଷ୍ଟିଙ୍କ ରଚିତ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ଗବେଷଣା ତଥ୍ୟ ସମ୍ବଳିତ ଏକ ଇଂରାଜୀ ବହି "Classical Odia" ଓ ଶ୍ରୀଯୁକ୍ତ ପୃଷ୍ଟିଙ୍କ ଦୁଇଟି ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବହି "ଭାଷା ଓ ଜାତୀୟତା" ଏବଂ "ଜାତି, ଜାଗୃତି ଓ ପ୍ରଗତି"କୁ CC-BY-SA ୩.୦ ଲାଇସେନ୍ସରେ ପୁନ-ଲାଇସେନ୍ସ କରିବାର ଅନୁମତି ଦେଲେ । ଏହି ଲାଇସେନ୍ସ ଜଣେ ପାଠକକୁ କେବଳ ବହିଟି ପଢ଼ିବାର ସୁଯୋଗ ଦେଇନଥାଏ, ବରଂ ବହିର ସ୍ରଷ୍ଟାଙ୍କୁ ଶ୍ରେୟ ଦେଇ ବହିର ଲେଖାକୁ ପୁନ-ବ୍ୟବହାର ଓ ବିତରଣ କରିପାରେ । ଏହା ଏକ ଯୁଗାନ୍ତକାରୀ ଓ ଐତିହାସିକ ପଦକ୍ଷେପ । ଯଦି ଆମ ଲେଖକ ଓ ପ୍ରକାଶକ ମାନେ ଏମିତି ଅନୁମତି ଦିଅନ୍ତେ ତେବେ ଅନେକ ଉପାଦେୟ ବହି ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ହୋଇ ପାଠକର ପଠନ ଭୋକ ମେଣ୍ଟାନ୍ତା । ଶ୍ରୀଯୁକ୍ତ ପୃଷ୍ଟିଙ୍କ ବହି ଦୁଇଟିର ଲେଖାର ଫଣ୍ଟ ରୂପାନ୍ତର ହୋଇ ଏବେ ତାହା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାରରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ହେବ । ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page/Odia ଠାରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଏକ ଡିଜିଟାଲ ଲାଇବ୍ରେରି ଯେଉଁଥିରେ କପିରାଇଟର ଜଞ୍ଜାଳରୁ ମୁକ୍ତ ବହିମାନ ପାଠକମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଖୋଲାରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ । ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାରରେ ଆମ ଭାଗବତ, ମହାଭାରତଠାରୁ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରି ବିଜ୍ଞାନ ଓ ଆଇନର ବହିସବୁ ରଖାଯାଇପାରିବ । ବହୁ ବର୍ଷ ଧରି ଛପା ହୋଇନଥିବା ଅନେକ ଉପାଦେୟ ବହି ଯେ କେବଳ ପାଠକମାନଙ୍କ ଅବାଧ ପଠନର ଦିଗନ୍ତଟିଏ ବିସ୍ତାରିବ ତା' ନୁହେଁ, ବରଂ ଆମ ଭାଷାର ଅଧିକ ପାଠ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଇ ଓଡ଼ିଆକୁ ଆଉ ପାଞ୍ଚ ବିଶ୍ୱସ୍ତରୀୟ ଭାଷା ସଙ୍ଗେ କାନ୍ଧ ମିଳାଇ ଛିଡ଼ାହେବାକୁ ଭରସା ଦେବ ।

ଖାଲି ବହି ନୁହେଁ ଆମ ଖବରକାଗଜମାନ ମଧ୍ୟ ହେଲେ ଚଳନ୍ତି ଇତିହାସର ରଥଚକ । ବହି, ପତ୍ରିକା ଆଉ ଖବରକାଗଜରୁ ତଥ୍ୟ ନେଇ ଭରିହେବ ଆମ ଭାଷାର ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆକୁ । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଏକ ଆନ୍ତର୍ଜାତିକ ସଙ୍ଗଠନ ଉଇକିମିଡ଼ିଆର ଅଂଶବିଶେଷ । ଅନେକେ ଇଂରାଜୀ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରୁ ନିତି କେତେ ବିଷୟ ପଢୁଥିବେ, ହେଲେ ଥରେ ବୋଧେ ଭାବି ନଥିବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଥିବା ବାବଦରେ । ୨୦୦୨ରୁ ଆରମ୍ଭ ହୋଇ ୨୦୧୧ ଯାଏ ସୁପ୍ତିରେ ଥିଲା ଏହି ଅନଲାଇନ ଜ୍ଞାନକୋଷ । ତେବେ ବେଙ୍ଗାଳୁରୁଠାରେ କେତେଜଣ ଓଡ଼ିଆଙ୍କ ଉଦ୍ୟମରେ ପୁଣି ତେଜିଲା ଆଉ କିଛି ଉତ୍ସାହୀ ଓଡ଼ିଆ, ଓଡ଼ିଶା ଓ ଭାରତର କୋଣ-ସନୁକୋଣରୁ ଏଥିରେ ଭାଗ ନେବା ଆରମ୍ଭ କଲେ । ମାତ୍ର ୧୫ ଜଣ ସ୍ୱେଚ୍ଛାସେବୀ ଉଇକିଆଳି (ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ସମ୍ପାଦକ)ଙ୍କ ସମ୍ପାଦିତ ୮,୦୦୦ ରୁ ଅଧିକ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗରେ ଭରା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ବିଶାଳତମ ଇନଲାଇନ ଜ୍ଞାନକୋଷ । ଜ୍ଞାନକୋଷ ଭିତ୍ତିକ ଲେଖା ବୋଧେ ଗୋପାଳ ପ୍ରହରାଜଙ୍କ ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣଚନ୍ଦ୍ର ଭାଷାକୋଷ ଓ ବିନୋଦ କାନୁନଗୋଙ୍କ ଜ୍ଞାନମଣ୍ଡଳ ପରେ ଆଉ ସାମୁହିକ ଭାବେ ଲେଖାହୋଇନଥିବ । or.wikipedia.orgରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ସମସ୍ତେ ଭାଗନେଇ ନୂଆ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ଗଢ଼ିପାରିବେଓ ଆଗରୁ ଥିବା ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗର ସମ୍ପାଦନା କରିପାରିବେ । ଅନେକେ ଯେ ଗୁଗଲରେ ଆଉ ଫେସବୁକରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଆସୁନାହିଁ ବୋଲି ଗୁମାନ କରିବସନ୍ତି ତାକୁ ଆଣିବାର ଗୋଟେ ବାଟ ହେଲା ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ନିଜ ଅଞ୍ଚଳ, ପର୍ଯ୍ୟଟନ ସ୍ଥଳ, ନିଜ ପସନ୍ଦରେ ବ୍ୟକ୍ତିତ୍ୱ, ଆମର ଇତିହାସ ଓ ଆହୁରି ଅନେକ ବିଷୟରେ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗମାନ ଲେଖିବା ।

ଭବିଷ୍ୟତ ପାଇଁ ପନ୍ଥା:

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବହିର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ରୂପ: ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାରରେ ଅଚିରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବହି ସବୁକୁ ଡିଜିଟାଲ ରୂପରେ ଲେଖା ଭାବେ ରଖାଯାଇପାରିବ । ତେବେ ବହି ସବୁର ଲାଇସେନ୍ସକୁ Creative Commons Share-Alike କିମ୍ବା Public Domainରେ ପ୍ରକାଶକ କିମ୍ବା ସତ୍ୱାଧିକାରୀଙ୍କ ଅନୁମତି କ୍ରମେ ବଦଳାଇବାକୁ ପଡ଼ିବ ।
ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଅଧିକ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ କଣ୍ଟେଣ୍ଟ ତିଆରି: ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଏଥିପାଇଁ ଏକ ପ୍ରକୃଷ୍ଠ ସ୍ଥାନ । ଏହା ସମସ୍ତଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଖୋଲାଥିବାରୁ ଅଧିକ ସଂଖ୍ୟକ ଲୋକ ମଧ୍ୟ ଏଥିରେ ଲେଖିପାରିବେ । ଏଥିସହିତ ଖବରକାଗଜ, ପତ୍ରପତ୍ରିକା ଆଦି ମଧ୍ୟ ନିଜର ୱେବସାଇଟରେ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ରେ ଲେଖାସବୁ ଦେବାକୁ ପଡ଼ିବ ।
ଓପନସୋର୍ସ ସାଧନର ବ୍ୟବହାର: ଅନେକ ଓପନସୋର୍ସ ସଫ୍ଟଓଏର ଏବେ ବ୍ୟବହୃତ ଆଡୋବ ପେଜମେକର ଆଦି ଡିଟିପି ସଫ୍ଟଓଏରର ବିକଳ୍ପ ଭାବେ ବ୍ୟବହାର ହୋଇପାରିବ । ଆକୃତି, ଶ୍ରୀଲିପି ଆଦିର ବଦଳରେ ଡିଟିପି ପାଇଁ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ ଫଣ୍ଟ ବ୍ୟବହାର କଲେ ଏବେ ଲେଖା ବିତରଣରେ ଯେଉ ବିରାଟ ଖମାଟିଏ ରହିଛି ତାହା କିଛିକାଂଶରେ ଭରିଯିବ । ସୁଖର କଥା ମାଗଣାରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଉବଣ୍ଟୁ ଓ ଫେଡୋରା ଭଳି ଓପନସୋର୍ସ ଅପରେଟିଙ୍ଗ ସିଷ୍ଟମ ମାଇକ୍ରୋସଫ୍ଟର ଉଇଣ୍ଡୋଜ XP, ଭିସ୍ତା ଆଦିଠୁ ଯଥେଷ୍ଟ ଅଧିକ ନିରାପଦ ଓ ଭାଇରସ ରହିତ । ବ୍ୟବହାରୀରେ ଏହାକୁ ଆପଣେଇପାରିବେ
ଓଡ଼ିଆକୁ ବାଧ୍ୟତାମୂଳକ ଭାବେ ପାଠ୍ୟକ୍ରମରେ ରଖିବା: ଶିଶୁର ଭାଷା ତା' ବୋଉର ଭାଷା ହେବା ଉଚିତ, ସେଥିପାଇଁ ଏହା ମା'ବୋଲି ମା ମା' ତୁଣ୍ଡର ଭାଷା ବୋଲି ଜଣା । ତଣ୍ଟିଚିପି ପିଲାଟିକୁ ଜନ୍ମ ହେବା ବେଳୁ ଚାକିରି ପାଇଁ ଯୋଗ୍ୟ କରିବାରେ ଯେଉଁ ବୃଥା ପରିଶ୍ରମ ଅଭିଭାବକେ କରୁଛନ୍ତି ତା' ପିଲାଟି ଉପରେ ଜୋର-ଜବରଦସ୍ତି ଏକ ବିଦେଶୀ ଭାଷା ଲଦି ଦେଉଛି । ଏହାର ପ୍ରଭାବରେ ପିଲାର ମାନସିକ ସନ୍ତୁଳନ ବିଗିଡ଼ି ନିଜ ଜାତି, ଅଞ୍ଚଳ, ରାଜ୍ୟ, ଲୋକେ ଆଉ ଏପରିକି ନିଜ ପରିବାର ପ୍ରତି ଛୁଆବେଳୁ ଏକ ପ୍ରକାର ମମତା-ରହିତ ହୋଇଯାଉଛି । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶିକ୍ଷା ଶିଶୁ ଶ୍ରେଣୀରୁ ନେଇ ବିଏ-ବିଏସସି ଯାଏ ବାଧ୍ୟତାମୂଳକ ହେଉ । ଓଡ଼ିଶାରେ ବାକି ରାଜ୍ୟ ଭଳି ଏକ ଗବେଷଣାମୂଳକ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବିଶ୍ୱବିଦ୍ୟାଳୟ ପ୍ରତିଷ୍ଠା ହେଉ । ଏ ଭାଷା ଯଥେଷ୍ଟ ଆଧୁନିକ ପ୍ରେମ କବିତା ଶୁଣିଲାଣି । ଭାଷାର ଅତୀତ, ବର୍ତ୍ତମାନ ଓ ଭବିଷ୍ୟତର ବିଶ୍ଳେଷଣ ଲୋଡ଼ା ।
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ହେଉ ସରକାରୀ ଭାଷା: ଯେତେ ଯାହା ହେଉ ଯଦି ଭାଷାଟିଏ ରାଜଭାଷା ବା ସରକାରୀ କାମରେ ନ ଲାଗିଲା ତାହେଲେ ଭାଷା ପ୍ରତି ଯେତେ ମମତା ଥାଉ, ସାଧାରଣ ଲୋକଟିଏ ବ୍ୟାଙ୍କରୁ ଋଣ ଆଣିବା ବେଳେ କଷ୍ଟେମଷ୍ଟେ ଇଂରାଜୀରେ ଲେଖିବ । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ସରକାରୀ ସ୍ତରରେ ବାଧ୍ୟତାମୂଲକ ହେଲେ ବାହାରୁ ଆସୁଥିବା ଆଇଏଏସ ଅଫିସର ଯେଉଁମାନେ ସରକାରୀ କଳର ମୁଖ୍ୟ, ମଧ୍ୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶିଖିବେ ଓ ଲୋକଙ୍କର ଅସୁବିଧା ବେଶି ବୁଝିବେ । ମଣିଷର ପ୍ରାକୃତିକ ଭାଷା ଯଦି ପଠନ, ଲିଖନ, ସରବରାହ ଓ ଯୋଗାଯୋଗର ଭାଷା ହେଲା ସେ ଭାଷାର ଗତିକୁ ଯେ କେହି ରୋକିପାରିବେ ନାହିଁ ତାହା ଆମ ପାଇଁ ମାଣ୍ଡାରିନ, ଜାପାନୀ, ଥାଇ ଆଦି ଏସୀୟ ଭାଷାମାନଙ୍କଠୁ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରି ଫରାସୀ, ଜର୍ମାନ, ଋଷିଆନ, ଆରବୀ ଆଦି ଛାମୁଆଁ ଭାଷାସମୂହ ଆମ ଆଗରେ ପ୍ରମାଣ କରିଦେଇଛନ୍ତି । ଆଉ ଇଂରାଜୀକୁ ଆମର ଶତ୍ରୁ ନ ମଣି ତା' କାନ୍ଧରେ ଚଢ଼ି ଆମ୍ବ ପାରିବା କୌଶଳଟି ଏ ସାଧବର ଦାୟାଦ ଜାତିକୁ ଶିଖିବାକୁ ପଡ଼ିବ।

ଲେଖକ ପରିଚିତି:

ଶୁଭାଶିଷ ପାଣିଗ୍ରାହୀ ଜଣେ ଶିକ୍ଷା ଗବେଷକ । ସେ ଉଇକିମିଡିଆ ଫାଉଣ୍ଡେସନରୁ ଅନୁଦାନପ୍ରାପ୍ତ ସେଣ୍ଟର ଫର ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ଏଣ୍ଡ ସୋସାଇଟିର ଆକସେସ ଟୁ ନଲେଜରେ ପ୍ରୋଗ୍ରାମ ଅଧିକାରୀ ଭାବେ କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷାଶିକ୍ଷା ସମ୍ବନ୍ଧରେ କାମ କରୁଛନ୍ତି । ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଓ Mozilla ତଥା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାରେ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଲୋକାଲାଇଜେସନର ମାନକ, ଓଡ଼ିଶାରେ ବିଭିନ୍ନ ବିଶ୍ୱବିଦ୍ୟାଳୟ ଓ ଶିକ୍ଷାନୁଷ୍ଠାନରେ ଛାତ୍ରମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ସମ୍ପାଦନା ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ, ବିଶ୍ୱସ୍ତରରେ OpenGLAMର ସଦସ୍ୟ ଓ ଭାରତୀୟ ଆମ୍ବାସାଡର ଭାବରେ ଓ OpenEducation ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ଅଧିକ ଜ୍ଞାନର ବିତରଣର ସାଧନ ନିର୍ମାଣ, ଉଇକିମାନିଆ ଭଳି ଆନ୍ତର୍ଜାତୀୟ ସମ୍ମିଳନୀରେ ଭାଗନେଇ ଏସୀୟ ଭାଷାସମୂହ ପାଇଁ ମିଳିତ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟକ୍ରମ ତଥା ନାଗରିକ ସାମ୍ବାଦିକ ସଙ୍ଗଠନ Global Voicesର ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଲିଙ୍ଗୁଆ ମୁଖ୍ୟ ଭାବେ ସେ ଭାଷା ଗବେଷଣା ଓ ଭାଷାର କମ୍ପୁଟରୀକରଣ ପାଇଁ ବିଭିନ୍ନ ସାଧନ ନିର୍ମାଣରେ ସେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ।

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/state-of-odia-language-in-computing-and-future-steps

ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷରସଜ୍ଜା

subha — 2014-07-28T06:02:16Z

This article was published in the Samaja (Odia newspaper) on July 4, 2014.

This is an article "ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷରସଜ୍ଜା" published in The Samaja on July 4, 2014 is about the Akruti Sarala - Unicode Odia converter that fellow Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar and myself worked. Akruti is a modified/extended ISCII encoding based font that is used by many users. This converter could convert them to Unicode so the text could not just be searchable on the Internet but could also be used for posting on Facebook, mail, Wikipedia, blogs and other websites. This has been published today in the editorial page.

Read a scanned version of the published article below:

Read the Samaja paper here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/article-on-akruti-unicode-converter-in-samaja

Odia Language gets a new Unicode Font Converter

subha — 2014-07-02T09:59:31Z

Recently, I worked on designing a font encoding converter with a fellow Wikimedian Manoj Sahukar. We worked by taking the code of a converter that was made three years back and made it work for two fonts AkrutiOriSarala99 and AkrutiOriSarala that are used by the media industry for printing and publishing.

This converter can now convert text typed using a modified ISCII based encoding and help generating Unicode text. Based on this learning from this I created another such converter for one such popular font Shreelipi that is used by Government of Odisha's official documentation including a magazine. The following is a summary of the usability of the converters:

It’s been over a decade since Unicode standard was made available for Odia script. Odia is a language spoken by roughly 33 million people in Eastern India, and is one of the many official languages of India. Since its release, it has been challenging to get more content on Unicode, the reason being many who are used to other non-Unicode standards are not willing to make the move to Unicode. This created the need for a simple converter that could convert text once typed in various non-Unicode fonts to Unicode. This could enrich Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects by converting previously typed content and making it more widely available on the internet. The Odia language recently got such a converter, making it possible to convert two of the most popular fonts among media professionals (AkrutiOriSarala99 and AkrutiOriSarala) into Unicode.

All of the non-Latin scripts came under one umbrella after the rollout of Unicode. Since then, many Unicode compliant fonts have been designed and the open source community has put forth effort to produce good quality fonts. Though contribution to Unicode compliant portals like Wikipedia increased, the publication and printing industries in India were still stuck with the pre-existing ASCII and ISCII standards (Indian font encoding standard based on ASCII). Modified ASCII fonts that were used as typesets for newspapers, books, magazines and other printed documents still exist in these industries. This created a massive amount of content that is not searchable or reproducible because it is not Unicode compliant. The difference in Unicode font is the existence of separate glyphs for the Indic script characters along with the Latin glyphs that are actually replaced by the Indic characters. So, when someone does not have a particular ASCII standard font installed, the typed text looks absurd (see Mojibake), however text typed using one Unicode font could be read using another Unicode font in a different operating system. Most of the ASCII fonts that are used for typing Indic languages are proprietary and many individuals/organizations even use pirated software and fonts. Having massive amounts of content available in multiple standards and little content in Unicode created a large gap for many languages including Odia. Until all of this content gets converted to Unicode to make it searchable, sharable and reusable, then the knowledge base created will remain inaccessible. Some of the Indic languages fortunately have more and more contributors creating Unicode content. There is a need to work on technological development to convert non-Unicode content to Unicode and open it up for people to use.

There are a few different kinds of fonts used by media and publication houses, the most popular one is Akruti. Two other popular standards are LeapOffice and Shreelipi. Akruti software comes bundled with a variety of typefaces and an encoding engine that works well in Adobe Acrobat Creator, the most popular DTP software package. Industry professionals are comfortable using it for its reputation and seamless printing. The problem of migrating content from other standards to Unicode arose when the Odia Wikimedia community started reaching out to these industry professionals. Apparently authors, government employees and other professional were more comfortable using one of the standards mentioned above. All of these people type using either a generic popular standard, Modular, or a universal standard, Inscript. Fortunately, the former is now incorporated into Mediawiki‘s Universal Language Selector (ULS) and the latter is in the process of getting added to ULS. Once this is done, many folks could start contributing to Wikipedia easily. Content that has been typed in various modified ASCII fonts include encyclopedias that could help grow content on Wikisource and Wikiquote. All of these need to be converted to Unicode. The non-profit group Srujanika first initiated a project to build a converter for conversion of two different Akruti fonts: AkrutiOriSarala99 and OR-TT Sarala. The former being outdated and the other being less popular. The Rebati 1 converter which was built by the Srujanika team was not being maintained and was more of an orphan project.
Above: Akruti Sarala - Unicode Odia converter user manual. Image credit: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-3.0

There are a few different kinds of fonts used by media and publication houses, the most popular one is Akruti. Two other popular standards are LeapOffice and Shreelipi. Akruti software comes bundled with a variety of typefaces and an encoding engine that works well in Adobe Acrobat Creator, the most popular DTP software package. Industry professionals are comfortable using it for its reputation and seamless printing. The problem of migrating content from other standards to Unicode arose when the Odia Wikimedia community started reaching out to these industry professionals. Apparently authors, government employees and other professional were more comfortable using one of the standards mentioned above. All of these people type using either a generic popular standard, Modular, or a universal standard, Inscript. Fortunately, the former is now incorporated into Mediawiki‘s Universal Language Selector (ULS) and the latter is in the process of getting added to ULS. Once this is done, many folks could start contributing to Wikipedia easily.

Content that has been typed in various modified ASCII fonts include encyclopedias that could help grow content on Wikisource and Wikiquote. All of these need to be converted to Unicode. The non-profit group Srujanika first initiated a project to build a converter for conversion of two different Akruti fonts: AkrutiOriSarala99 and OR-TT Sarala. The former being outdated and the other being less popular. The Rebati 1 converter which was built by the Srujanika team was not being maintained and was more of an orphan project.

Above: Akruti Sarala - Unicode Odia converter user manual. Image credit: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-3.0

Fellow Wikimedian Manoj Sahukar and myself used parts of the “Rebati 1 converter” code and worked on building another converter. The new “Akruti Sarala – Unicode Odia converter” can convert the more popular AkrutiOriSarala font and its predecessor AkrutiOriSarala99, which is still used by some. Odia Wikimedian Mrutyunjaya Kar and journalist Subhransu Panda have helped by reporting broken conjuncts which helps in fixing all problems before publishing. Odia authors and journalists have already started using the font and many of them have regular posts in Odia. We are waiting for more authors to contribute to Wikipedia by converting their work and wikifying it.

Recently a beta version of another Unicode font converter for Shreelipi fonts based on Odia Wikipedian Shitikantha Dash‘s initial code is released. It works with at least 85 % accuracy.

"Even after getting the classical status, Odia language is not being used actively on the internet like some other Indian languages. The main reason behind this is our writing system has not been web-friendly. Most of those in Odisha having typing skills, use modular keyboard and Akruti fonts. Akruti is not web-compatible as we know. There are thousands of articles, literary works, news stories typed in Akruti fonts lying unused (on the internet). Thanks to Subhashish Panigrahi and his associates, they have developed this new font converter that can convert your Akruti text into Unicode. I have checked it. It’s error-free. Now it’s easy for us to write articles online (for Wikipedia and other sites). Yes, we are late entrants as far as use of vernacular languages on the internet is concerned. But this converter will help us to go godspeed. Lets make Odia our language of communication and expression."

The above was originally posted on Wikimedia blog.

Quick Links

Copyright notes: "Akruti Sarala - Unicode converter screenshot mock-up.svg", "Akruti converter user manual (white).svg" by Subhashish Panigrahi , under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-language-gets-new-unicode-font-converter

This Twitter Account Puts a Face to the Unsung Volunteer Editors Behind Wikipedia

subha — 2014-07-03T06:17:56Z

The life of a Wikipedia editor is an interesting one. Globally, about 100,000 editors edit the collaborative online encyclopedia's 30 million articles in 287 languages, including over 4.5 million in the English Wikipedia.

Click to read the post published on Global Voices here.

They dedicate a tremendous amount of their time to contribute and edit articles, but for no pay (editors work as volunteers) and for little public recognition – their work is credited via their usernames tucked away in the entry's edit history.

Now, one initiative is trying to shine the spotlight on these hard-working “Wikipedians.” WeAreWikipedia is an unofficial project that brings on a different editor each week to curate information regarding their favorite Wikipedia pages and tweet them using the handle @WeAreWikipedia. So far, 19 people representing 17 different language Wikipedias have curated the account.

WeAreWikipedia explains on its blog that it was inspired by a weekly rotation curation handle @WeAreBangalore created by social media strategists from the Indian city of Bangalore in October 2013 to create a space for Bangaloreans to tell their stories, give their opinions or simple connect with other active social media users in the area.

Admin: Most of u r not aware that, one of our previous curators @psubhashish was inspired by us and started global #RoCur @WeAreWikipedia :)
— Bangalore/Rajeev (@WeAreBangalore) June 17, 2014

@WeAreBangalore in turn took its cue from the highly successful @sweden, which turns over the Twitter handle to a different Swede every week as a sort of citizen ambassador program.

The WeAreWikipedia curators also tell personal stories and explain the technicalities of publishing and editing Wikipedia to any readers who ask.

Wherever I go, local Wikipedians are so welcoming and so open to collaboration. I have made friends all around the globe.
— WeAreWikipedia (@WeAreWikipedia) junio 17, 2014

Curators often focus tweets on their Wikipedia language community and country. Two women editors from India, Noopur Raval and Netha Hussain, dedicated many of their publications to facts about women’s rights, issues and development in India while curating the handle during Women’s History Month in March. They also drew attention to an edit-a-thon held in Bangalore that brought 90 women to write about 77 articles related to women in India.

Mariona Aragay, an editor for the Catalan Wikipedia, made a related call for more women editors while she was at the helm of @WeAreWikipedia:

As a wikipedian, it concernes me the low ratio of #woman editors: if you’re a wiki-girl, let us know your experience! #gendergap @wikiwomen

— WeAreWikipedia (@WeAreWikipedia) June 4, 2014

Curators also highlight community events, such as Odisha Dibasa 2014, a gathering at the end of March 2014 of the Odia-language Wikipedia community in the capital of the Indian state of Odisha, where the language is predominantly spoken.

Diptiman Panigrahi, an Odia editor who curated @WeAreWikipedia during the event, talked about his week in a blog post for The Centre for Internet and Society in India:

It was a wonderful experience curating WeAreWikipedia without even much time. Meeting the entire Wikimedia global community was even more fun when I was telling happenings of my own community. I hope to take part in more of such collaborative global issues like this.

You can follow WeAreWikipedia on Twitter, Facebook and on their blog.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/global-voices-online-june-18-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-twitter-account-puts-a-face-to-unsung-volunteer-editors-behind-wikipedia

Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources

subha — 2014-06-04T03:32:57Z

The Open Education Working Group sees supporting multilingual activities such as translation to and from languages which are not often used as one of its key future roles. Subhashish Panigrahi’s post while dwelling upon the growth of Indic Wikimedia communities critically examines Wikipedia as an educational resource.

The article by Subhashish Panigrahi was published in Open Education Working Group website on May 27, 2014.

Subhashish Panigrahi is an an educator and open source activist based in Bangalore, India. He is a long time Wikimedian and is involved in many activism and policy level debates around open education. Currently he is working at the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge program where he is working on designing implementation projects for catalyzing growth of Indic Wikimedia communities and content acquisition.

In the past, he has worked on building partnership with universities, language research organizations, government departments, GLAM institutions and individuals for bringing more scholarly and encyclopedic content on language, culture and history under free licenses. He is excited about experimenting on new methodologies in education, building interactive educational resources and bringing knowledge producing institutions, resourceful experts and scholars under one roof. He has been involved in various language related conferences and spoken in both policy and implementation discourses around open knowledge and open source.

Since the inception of four Indic language Wikipedias: Assamese, Malayalam, Odia and Punjab in 2002, the focus of Wikimedia Foundation has been diverse in many aspects.

Wikipedia’s focus oriented from Latin to non-Latin projects which was high-risk but revolutionary specifically in four of the aforementioned languages besides the other language Wikipedias that came a little later. It is quite obvious that the number of contributors to the Indic language Wikimedia projects were very few. Indic input in Unicode standard was less popular. Wikipedia struggled back then and still continues to struggle in terms of getting voluntary contributions and quality content because of these reasons.


Above: A screen shot of Assamese Wikipedia page

In its initial phase of community building the language projects faced difficulties in teaching people about typing in their own scripts. It was a painful exercise – starting from scratch to building language input tools and tutorials, conducting outreach for mass-awareness and educating them of the importance of building content for their future generation and other such activities. Today, about 12 out of the 20 Indic language Wikipedias are active in terms of growth in the size of the contributor community and quality content. However, since the available resources are more or less limited in general and also lacking more in regional languages, there has been dependence on text books as useful educational resources. There is a complete dearth of peer reviewed journals and research documents in Indic languages. If there are some, they have not been digitized and some of the digitized resources are not available in accessible formats. With this there is a need to rethink about the potential to open Wikipedia up for more contribution from the academia and researcher communities.


Odia Wikipedia workshop, IIMC, Dhenkanal 18-19 November 2013 [Source Wikmedia Commons]

Conventionally educational resources are created by subject experts in a limited time frame and reviewed for factual accuracy. Wikipedia, on the contrary could be edited by anyone at any point of time and the content is ever changing. Many-a-times stub class articles get created. Not all of the articles are also of good quality. All of these result in a mixed spectrum of articles of varied quality. So, the entire Wikipedia, per se cannot be taken as OER.. It is quite challenging to get dedicated volunteers to devote their time to enhance the quality and keep the articles updated.

The ever changing nature of Wikipedia could be a potential opportunity to look at it as an educational resource that is more dynamic and upgradable in nature. Some of the subjects such as science or humanities in our education syllabi have content that is perpetually true in nature. If well written, then these kind of articles could be taken as OER as these do not need constant change. However, many other study programs including the applied disciplines are not up to date because of the conventional mode of education. There is a need to revamp the educational system and bring a more dynamic and informative system. Wikipedia, for sure will be a good platform for specific areas of education like these. However, this could be attained only if there are a group of contributors while implementing mass-scale WikipediaEducation Programs.

While working with two different batches of masters students of journalism at Indian Institute of MassCommunication at Dhenkanal in Odisha, I experienced the multitude of such fast pace of information flow that does not exist in many other disciplines. In general, people working on current issues of the world remain in a high information zone. If such talents could be tapped by bringing Wikipedia into their zone of action, then something great could be leveraged. Similarly, many researchers and people that are involved in work related documentation could be tapped when looking at specific subject areas for creating a subset of educational resource building exercise from Wikipedia.


Screenshot of the Chatasabha which is a help desk on Odia Wikipedia

The drawback in the existing text book compilation process is that a fixed number of people might make it a monotonous process. Things like visual appeal and user experience, the layers of reuse, remix and reproduction that Wikipedia offers will be lacking. The process of bringing Indic language Wikipedias into the curricula also unleashes the opportunity of creating an inclusive community of experts and passively absorbing information from the existing resources including books that are currently the only educational resources. The constant discourse that a language or academic community that are subsets of a Wikipedia community, cross-pollination of ideas, information, experiments from inter-related and interdisciplinary collectives adds many additional layers of complexity to the way information get on to Wikipedia. This very complexity makes it stand out as a completely different system altogether that learns, changes the ways of approach, preserves learning and presents itself is an institution.

So far, most of the Indic languages Wikipedias are the largest reservoirs of knowledge despite the challenges of sustaining the contributing community. To take them to a new level needs the risk of allowing potential vandals of taking it to the larger audience as a contributor and taking to the knowledge seeking mass as an Open Educational Resource. As Wikipedia itself, this would be another happening journey if the challenges and mistakes are accepted. Otherwise, bringing the right balance and opening up the existing system might just take centuries and that is alarming for this society that cannot wait inside the cocoon of being completely perfect but outdated and afford to walk slower.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-education-working-group-may-27-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-indic-language-wikipedias-as-open-educational-resources

GLAM in India: 10 tips for successful GLAM projects

subha — 2014-05-27T09:13:42Z

GLAM initiatives work as a gateway to unleash knowledge, decode archived documentation to build modern wonders and also educate people about their past cultural and scientific journey.

This was published in OpenGLAM on May 22, 2014.

In 2012, India celebrated its first GLAM project on Hindi Wikipedia at the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, New Delhi. This museum houses a vast majority of Indian crafts - Pattachitra from Odisha, Bidri from Karnataka, colorful and intricate Banarasi sari from northern India and Saura art from indigenous tribes of Eastern India to name a few. It is also a workshop and home to many artisans and folk artists who live, paint, carve, sell, sing, perform and make a living being based in the museum as resident artisans.


A weaver weaving a shawl using handloom (Anil Bhardwaj / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

For this project, Wikimedia India and the India Program were roped in to plan, design and have the Wikimedia community train staffers on how to document Indian crafts, from royal lineage to folk. This resulted in the creation of many Indian craft-related articles in the Hindi Wikipedia and English Wikipedia as well as images on Wikimedia Commons.

Based upon my first hand experience of working closely with the staffers and the Wikimedia community during this project, I would like to share a few tips that might help you while planning and implementing a GLAM project:

1. Show what is it in for them

Large, public entities like museums, archives and libraries can be hesitant to open their doors for free public access. While discussing the potential of a GLAM project, it is wise to explain how the project will bring popularity, highlight the work that institutes are doing and will in turn benefit the government in preserving the state’s culture. Give examples of other such GLAM institutions which have gained public attention by adopting open strategies or by holding public events.

2. Show the institutions the big picture

Institutions often see their success in terms of number of visitors, number of media mentions or the number of sales (if they have some publications or a sales desk selling handicrafts or postcards for example). Tell them how an online presence could bring them local, national as well as international visitors, especially when they have an online presence in popular sites like Wikipedia or Wikitravel.

3. Push beyond your limits

Institutions operate in their own ways and often you might feel like you get stuck. Working with new staffers in a new institution is a big challenge and the pace of work cannot be smooth. What really matters is how much you impart your knowledge among the staffers and educate them about things that will be beneficial for the institution for continuing more GLAM projects in the future.

4. Track work-in-progress

It is always crucial to have smart trackers. These could be as simple as a spreadsheet (Excel, Google, …) or a wiki table for a team’s online tracking. You can of course always design your own. A database containing participant details with different colours for indicating progress in a project is a great way for assigning work, knowing strengths and learning about areas for improvement. Evaluating work internally by making use of smart charts and keeping deadlines is a must when there is a set of activities to be done.

5. Start with claps, swags in the middle, award at the end

Mobilizing volunteer contributors, especially government staffers, is always challenging. Outreach coordinators play a key role in keeping a group motivated enough to work collaboratively for a GLAM project. Participating staff members need to be given special attention during In real life meetups and gatherings, as well as specific guidance during training sessions. Fun games and activities that engage people help breaking communication barriers and build friendship. Swags also excite people to join. When a project starts rolling, keep different levels of excitement by giving different kinds of customized swags like caps, pens, stickers and buttons etc. Printed handouts that work like cheat-sheets are also useful. Creating levels to achieve and awarding the best achievers is another way of keeping people excited. Recognition drives!


Staff being trained by GLAM coordinators (Anil Bhardwaj / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

6. Bring media attention towards the middle of the project

When a significant amount of work is done, break it to the media. Regional and national media coverage and few blog posts covering a project gives a lot of visibility to the institution and the people involved. This is in fact the best way to get internal administration level support for implementing a project. Interview some of the achievers, put them up on the project page and blogs and show those posts to them. Many people love to see audio-visual and printed news, and showing the participants their video interviews and published blogs is another way of letting them know about their great contribution.

7. Fail fast, think long term

If a GLAM project does not result in substantial success or sustains for long, it is essential to realize the fact that it is not an easy task to make changes to the system that is set over centuries. It takes time to mobilize and be brave to admit the failure. But it is also never really a failure when there is plenty of learning which others could benefit from before starting similar projects. Starting a new GLAM project is always an investment for the future. Milestones and even scars caused during the course of mobilizing an institution to open up its treasures for the public count and they, over time become parameters others consider.

8. Exit with a few leaders and chuck out way forwards

While working with a group of people, seek out for people who could lead a group and do specific work. This will not just reduce your workload, but will help to have a more decentralized focused work.

9. Document the flow

It is really really essential to document the work in a human manner. If resources permit, bring a professional to take candid shots, shoot a few interviews and B-rolls. You can also be frugal or hire a professional from the open source community for free and do the same. Documentation of learning, challenges and tips for others are essential things that you, as a good samaritan-community member could bring other GLAMers.

10. Empathy is the key

Over and above, empathy is the only key while dealing with real people in a real space. Connect to every person in a group, put yourself in their shoes and try being one of them: nothing works better in implementing a huge project. Knowledge transfer is a subset of the process of building a cordial relationship. Not all GLAM institutions have a system in place to educate their staff about technical aspects of archiving or renovating or developing skill-sets in general. Your presence should leverage the learning and knowledge that you would acquire from multiple levels.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-glam-may-22-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-glam-in-india-10-tips-for-successful-glam-projects

Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons

subha — 2014-05-28T06:29:57Z

This blog post is cross-posted from Opensource.com. It was published on May 2, 2014.

Image by opensource.com

I began working with the Wikimedia Foundation in January 2012 for program and community support in India. With the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program, we focus on open access for scholarly publications to help communities enrich Wikipedia entries for Indic languages.

While I was negotiating with a few authors to relicense their copyrighted books to a Creative Commons license (a license that allows anyone to reuse, modify and use content), I began identifying certain areas of motivation for an author to donate their work as free content.

We worked closely with Goa University, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa Trust, and the Institute of Odia Studies and Research.

Increasing open access for publications gained a lot when the government of India launched the National Repository of Open Educational Resources in August 2013 by the request of Wikimedia India. It generally takes a long time and much effort to negotiate with copyright holders for relicensing material as Creative Commons. But, when we do negotiate it, and win, the content is a permanent and valuable addition to open knowledge and the movement.

So far, authors might be avoiding open licensing because:

They think it might put them out of business because others could plagiarize and republish their work without attribution.
They think if they will lose ownership of the content due to the nature of open licenses, which allow reuse.

Open licensing should be important to authors because as more readers and reviewers get access to their books and other online content, the visibility of their work increases, allowing them to gain more respect and popularity. This can, in turn, help authors sell more of the reprints.

The "one book in every child's hand" campaign by Pratham Books was an initiative by a large publisher to license Indian langage books with a CC BY-SA license. The campaign's mission was to provide access to knowledge and good quality education of native Indian languages to students whose families cannot bear educational costs. Pratham Books gained a lot of attention globally and the campaign proved to be a sustainable model for publishers and free licenses.

Scholarly research publications are less prone to plagiarism because of their low retail value compared to mainstream fiction, self-help books, or travel and lifestyle books. Encyclopedic books have even less retail value. Thus, releasing content online under free licenses would not affect such scholarly works or encyclopedic print publications to a large extent.

Photo by Veethika Mishra, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Relicensing projects

Last year, Goa University applied a CC BY-SA 3.0 license to their four-volume encyclopedia, Konkani Vishwakosh. It is the largest encyclopedia compiled in the language. The book is being digitized on Konkani WikiSource, attracting new volunteers.
Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa relicensed eleven of the noted author Dr. Jagannath Mohanty's Odia books under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Classical Odia is a 600+ page book of historical documents and manuscripts on Odia language and literary heritage of more than 2,500 years. The researchers Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty moved from copyright to a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Two Odia language books by linguist Subrat Prusty have been relicensed to CC BY-SA 3.0. They are Jati, Jagruti O Pragati, and Bhasa O Jatiyata and have been digitized as well using ISCII standard fonts (not Unicode). ISCII standard fonts have glyphs with Indic characters that are actually replacements of the Latin characters by Indic characters.
A recent addition is the relicensing of the Kannada language encyclopedia published and copyrighted by Mysore University to a Creative Commons license.

The community and the publishers of books gain mutual benefits when more Indic language books are digitized, put online, and made freely available. By expanding online content and readership, a new life is given to many South Asian and non-Latin works, creating a revival for these languages and cultures.

Read the original post here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/opensource-education-may-2-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-books-and-more-are-relicensed-to-creative-commons

14 Odia books re-released under Creative Commons license

subha — 2014-05-06T06:26:29Z

This blog entry by Subhashish Panigrahi (originally published in Wikimedia Foundation's Blog) was edited and re-published by Rohini Lakshane in DNA on April 26, 2014.

Read the article published in DNA on April 26, 2014.

Odisha became a separate state in British India on April 1, 1936. Odia, a 2,500 year old language recently gained the status of an Indian classical language. The Odia Wikimedia community celebrated these two occasions on March 29 in Bhubaneswar with a gathering of 70 people. Linguists, scholars and journalists discussed the state of the Odia language in the digital era, initiatives for its development and steps that can be taken to increase accessibility to books and other educational resources. 14 copyrighted books have been re-licensed under the Creative Commons license and the digitization project on Odia WikiSource was formally initiated by an indigenous educational institute, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS). Professor Udayanath Sahu from Utkal University, The Odisha Review’s editor Dr. Lenin Mohanty, Odisha Bhaskar’s editor Pradosh Pattnaik, Odia language researcher Subrat Prusty, Dr. Madan Mohan Sahu, Allhadmohini Mohanty, Chairman Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa and trust’s secretary Brajamohan Patnaik along with senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash spoke at the event.

Eleven books from Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were re-released under Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA 3.0) license by the “Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa” trust, a trust founded by Dr. Mohanty for the development of the Odia language. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia to release and digitize these books. The community will be training students and a group of six faculty members at KISS who will coordinate the digitization of these books.	Group photo of Odia wikimedians participating in the advanced Wikimedia workshop at KIIT University.

Eleven books from Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were re-released under Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA 3.0) license by the “Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa” trust, a trust founded by Dr. Mohanty for the development of the Odia language. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia to release and digitize these books.

The community will be training students and a group of six faculty members at KISS who will coordinate the digitization of these books.

Group photo of Odia wikimedians participating in the advanced Wikimedia workshop at KIIT University.

“Collaborative efforts and open access to knowledge repositories will enrich our language and culture,” said linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak as he inagurated the event. Dr. Pattanayak and Odia language researcher Subrat Prusty from the Institute of Odia Studies and Research also re-licensed three books (Two Odia books; “Bhasa O Jatiyata“, “Jati, Jagruti O Pragati” and an English book “Classical Odia”) based on their research on Odia language and cultural influence of the language on other societies under the same license. KISS is going to digitize some of these books and make them available on Odia Wikisource.

An OpenType Odia Unicode font, “Odia OT Jagannatha” designed by Sujata Patel from Odialanguage.com was released under the OFL license. This is the first Odia OpenType font that the community actively tested. A new Odia offline input tool called “TypeOdia” by Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar was also released for public distribution. DVDs containing the font, the input tool, Odia language dictionaries, offline Odia Wikipedia in Kiwix, Wikipedia editing guide, ISCII to Unicode font converter, various free and open source software packages and Ubuntu operating system.

Active Odia Wikipedian and Admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech. Subhashish Panigrahi from the Center for Internet and Society read the annual report and vision of Odia Wikipedia. Chief guest Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak discussed about the efforts put forth that brought the Odia language as the sixth Indian classical language. A large majority of Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easy accessibility. He further discussed the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm leaf manuscripts. Professor Udayanath Sahu presented on the process, progress and implementation of machine translation project in Utkal University.

	Experienced Wikimedians conducted an advanced Wikipedia workshop on the second day of event at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. It was attended by a majority of the existing Wikimedians from the community including new Wikipedians who signed up for the Odia Wikipedia Education Program at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. Mrutyunjaya Kar presented on WikiData and various tools for linking and accessing information in multiple languages on various Wikimedia projects.

Ansuman Giri discussed advanced technical aspects such as the use of various gadgets, proper categorization, how to use subpages, how to auto-list archive pages, customizing WikiLove feature, user rights modification, including how important it is to cite biographies of living persons with secondary sources, etc. Shitikantha Dash discussed copyright and issues regarding uploading images and other media files on Wikimedia Commons.

Dr. Subas Chandra Rout presented on “notability, referencing and creating citations for the notable topics.” Subhashish Panigrahi discussed the work plan for the year, failure of program projects, collective learning and the dos and don’ts of community building.


“	We hope that more authors will come forward and re-release their books under CC-BY-SA license. The Odia community is excited to see or.wikisource.org go live. A few Wikipedians are even interested in typing their favorite free licensed books to make them available on Wikisource. I believe it’ll be challenging to train the KISS students to type and proof-read the written texts. In the CISA2K’s draft plan, the goal to have the number of editors seems overestimated. The students need to have some knowledge about Wikimedia and how it works in general before they start working. We hope that the books will be digitized properly and in coming days more users will join us in the process as we will have more free books in Odia Wikisource. I appeal to the Odia people to be a part of the Odia Wikimedia community and make Odia Wikisource a successful project, we need all the time you can devote. :-)	”
Ansuman Giri, Odia Wikipedian

Copyright notes: "A group photo of Odia wikipedians at kiit conference hall on 30th march 2014.jpg", "Odia wikipedian mrutyunjaya kar and ansuman giri on 30the march 2014.jpg" by Jnanaranjan Sahu , under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons, "Release of DVD containing Odia font, open source tools and Offline Odia Wikipedia.jpg" by Ahemadullah Shaikh , under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-rohini-lakshane-april-26-2014-14-books-re-released-under-creative-commons-license

Report from India: Relicensing books under CC

subha — 2014-05-05T09:13:15Z

My name is Subhashish Panigrahi. I am an educator currently working in the community and communication front at The Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge program (CIS-A2K), an India-based catalyst program to grow Indic language communities for Wikipedia and its sister projects. Prior to my work at CIS, I worked for the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program, a predecessor to the current CIS-A2K project.

Read the original published on Creative Commons Blog on April 18, 2014 here.

While building ties with higher education and research organizations, I also try to get educational and encyclopedic resources licensed under Creative Commons licenses so that communities can use them to enrich Wikimedia projects. Currently, there is a low level of content available across all the Indic languages and the need for Unicode-based content is extremely crucial.

	While negotiating with authors for relicensing their books in Creative Commons license, I started identifying certain motivation areas for any author for such free content donation. Some of the authors, publishers, and copyright holders have started learning about open access to scholarly publications. However, the readers who are likely to buy a hard copy of a book are likely to buy it even when a free, virtual version is available – that’s the idea authors who are skeptical about CC licenses need to understand.

While negotiating with authors for relicensing their books in Creative Commons license, I started identifying certain motivation areas for any author for such free content donation. Some of the authors, publishers, and copyright holders have started learning about open access to scholarly publications. However, the readers who are likely to buy a hard copy of a book are likely to buy it even when a free, virtual version is available – that’s the idea authors who are skeptical about CC licenses need to understand.

Open source book publishing in India has gained much interest and focus, primarily because of the lack of foresight of the possibilities that are tied to the release of books. It was Pratham Books that first came up with the brilliant idea of “One book book in every child’s hand.” The subsequent release of multilingual books under free licenses was the beginning of a new era in Indian publication.

Book publishers should also think of the target readers of print and web media. Releasing content in free licenses doesn’t affect the mainstream print publications. When it comes to books, there is always a scope for reprinting and making money. After negotiations with two authors and getting 13 books about children’s literature, travelogues, popular science, and linguistic and historical research, I am sure the publishing community has not been educated in the right way about providing free access to content.

It generally takes a long time and effort to negotiate with the copyright holders to get the books out with a CC-BY-SA tag. But it is a permanent and a significant value addition for the open knowledge movement. I believe with more online readers and reviewers getting complete access to books, authors gain more respect in the society and popularity which in turn helps them to sell more of the reprints. Two prime fears are keeping many publishers away from releasing their books online for free: the fear of going out of business and the fear of losing ownership of content. But at the same time, some of the publishers are becoming aware of the mass media outreach and winning hearts of many readers by releasing content for free without copyright restrictions.

Case studies:

Release of a four-volume encyclopedia in Konkani

In 2013, Goa University released Konkani Vishwakosh, a Konkani-language encyclopedia in CC-BY-SA 3.0 license that they had published. This is the largest encyclopedia compiled in the language. The book is being digitized on Konkani WikiSource and content from it is being used to enrich the Konkani version of Wikipedia. The project additionally brought about 20 active contributors for digitization.

Release of 11 Odia language books

11 books from Odia author and academic Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were re-released under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license by the “Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa,” a trust founded by Dr. Mohanty for literary discussions and upbringing new writers. His wife and trust’s current chairman Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to release and digitize these books. The Odia Wikimedia community is planning to involve undergraduate students of an indigenous educational institution, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, to digitize these books. The trust is also reaching out to publishers who published more than 150 of the author’s books to give permission for re-releasing them under a CC license.

Relicensing “Classical Odia” under a free license

The book is heavy and expensive for any normal reader. Enormous copies were sold after Odia was declared as the sixth Indian classical language; however, this did not stop the authors Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty from changing the license term from All Rights Reserved to CC-BY-SA 3.0. 600-plus pages full of historical documents and manuscripts along with many undiscovered areas of Odia language’s literary heritage of more than 2500 years are now going to go on WikiSource and enrich Wikipedia articles apart from being great resource for language researchers.

Relicensing books and conversion of ISCII to Unicode font

Two Odia language books by linguist Subrat Prusty, “Jati, Jagruti O Pragati” and “Bhasa O Jatiyata,” have been relicensed. These are few of those thousand books in those the text are typed with fonts with ISCII standard and not Unicode. ISCII standard fonts have glyphs with Indic characters that are actually replacements of the Latin characters by Indic characters. So, a computer with one particular font not installed will display absurd characters. The publication and printing industries still use these fonts as the desktop publishing software package they use for typeset do not have Unicode engine to render the fonts properly. The conversion from these ISCII fonts to Unicode is a way that is going to be used for digitizaing these books to convert the entire book with searchable Unicode content.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/creative-commons-subhashish-panigrahi-april-18-2014-report-from-india-relicensing-books-under-creative-commons

Odisha Dibasa 2014: 14 Books Re-released under CC License

subha — 2014-04-14T10:57:43Z

Originally published on the Wikimedia blog on April 8, 2014. Media coverage of the event can be accessed here.

Linguists, scholars and journalists discussed the state of the Odia language in the digital era, initiatives for its development and steps that can be taken to increase accessibility to books and other educational resources. 14 copyrighted books have been re-licensed under the Creative Commons license and the digitization project on Odia WikiSource was formally initiated by an indigenous educational institute, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS). Professor Udayanath Sahu from Utkal University, The Odisha Review’s editor Dr. Lenin Mohanty, Odisha Bhaskar’s editor Pradosh Pattnaik, Odia language researcher Subrat Prusty, Dr. Madan Mohan Sahu, Allhadmohini Mohanty, Chairman Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa and trust’s secretary Brajamohan Patnaik along with senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash spoke at the event.

The community will be training students and a group of six faculty members at KISS who will coordinate the digitization of these books. “Collaborative efforts and open access to knowledge repositories will enrich our language and culture,” said linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak as he inagurated the event. Dr. Pattanayak and Odia language researcher Subrat Prusty from the Institute of Odia Studies and Research also re-licensed three books based on their research on Odia language and cultural influence of the language on other societies under the same license. KISS is going to digitize some of these books and make them available on Odia Wikisource.

Experienced Wikimedians conducted an advanced Wikipedia workshop on the second day of event at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. It was attended by a majority of the existing Wikimedians from the community including new Wikipedians who signed up for the Odia Wikipedia Education Program at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. Mrutyunjaya Kar presented on WikiData and various tools for linking and accessing information in multiple languages on various Wikimedia projects. Ansuman Giri discussed advanced technical aspects such as the use of various gadgets, proper categorization, how to use subpages, how to auto-list archive pages, customizing WikiLove feature, user rights modification, including how important it is to cite biographies of living persons with secondary sources, etc. Shitikantha Dash discussed copyright and issues regarding uploading images and other media files on Wikimedia Commons. Dr. Subas Chandra Rout presented on “notability, referencing and creating citations for the notable topics.” Subhashish Panigrahi discussed the work plan for the year, failure of program projects, collective learning and the dos and don’ts of community building.

We hope that more authors will come forward and re-release their books under CC-BY-SA license. The Odia community is excited to see or.wikisource.org go live. A few Wikipedians are even interested in typing their favorite free licensed books to make them available on Wikisource. I believe it’ll be challenging to train the KISS students to type and proof-read the written texts. In the CISA2K’s draft plan, the goal to have the number of editors seems overestimated. The students need to have some knowledge about Wikimedia and how it works in general before they start working. We hope that the books will be digitized properly and in coming days more users will join us in the process as we will have more free books in Odia Wikisource. I appeal to the Odia people to be a part of the Odia Wikimedia community and make Odia Wikisource a successful project, we need all the time you can devote. :-) Ansuman Giri, Odia Wikipedian


A group picture of Odia Wikipedians (by Jnanaranjan Sahu, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odisha-dibasa-2014

ଓଡ଼ିଅା ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର

subha — 2014-05-06T06:50:02Z

This article was published in Odia magazine "The Kadambini". It covers a brief history of the book digitization initiatives in Odia language, problems with access available content in ISCII standard, scope of Unicode content and Open Access, Odia Wikipedia's further use for public and contribution.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kadambini-april-8-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-odia-language-and-development-in-digital-era

Vachana Sanchaya: Bringing Access to 11th century Kannada Literature

subha — 2014-04-08T01:48:18Z

The blog post throws light on providing access to Vachana Sanchaya, a eleventh century Kannada literature.

The article was published in Open Access Week on April 3, 2014.

During early 11th century a form of spiritual Kannada language poetry in the Indian state of Karnataka called Vachana sahitya became quite popular. It started flourishing in the 12th century by a religious movement called Lingayatha movement. More than 259 Vachana writers, called Vachanakaru, compiled over 11,000 vachanas (verses). 21,000 of these verses in 15 volumes were published by the Government of Karnataka into an online portal called Samagra Vachana Samputa. Two Wikimedians along with two linguists brought these verses on a standalone project called Vachana Sanchaya. Kannada Wikimedians, Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI along with Kannada linguist O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy converted the font to Unicode to make the verses searchable on this project. The entire collection is now ready to enrich the Kannada WikiSource.

The text in Samagra Vachana Samputa were typed using fonts of ISCII, an Indian character encoding standard. Indic characters generally replace Latin ones inside the font that makes them completely useless when someone does not have the particular font installed in the computer. This is a typical problem with non-Latin fonts, especially Indic typefaces. In case of this particular publication, there were more than 5 ISCII standards which made searching and reusing content completely impossible. Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash started writing scripts to make the Vachanas searchable through an index. This demanded a user friendly platform for the linguistic researchers, students, and the public interested in accessing this literature.

Omshivaprakash worked on designing the architecture for this platform using open source software tools. Hanchagaiah was involved in providing critical hacks for digitization and valuable inputs through suggestions, feedback, and quality assurance.

At present, Vachana Sanchaya project has around 200,000 unique words that were derived from these verses. The public has been using the repository and accessing vachana from Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profiles. There are thousands of people now who read a Vahana as part of their daily routine. Vachana Sanchaya is not only a gateway for reading the literature, but also a research platform for Kannada language and literature. It has options for researchers to help in reviewing content which in turn will help to add references from research papers.

All of the content is currently available to the public through the OpenData API, and once the reviewing the work is complete, it will be distributed in the public domain through WikiSource. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers, and anyone interested in building linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages. Users will be able to use our code to digitize any book available in the public domain. Early literature in any language is well-respected, so making it available via an open platform allows for reuse of the content for research, publication, and other documentation work.

Other similar projects could take help from this project and use any part of the processes.

Plans going foward:

To initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researches help to tag words and grow the glossary.
To continue work on subsequent, similar projects for Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya (work has begun) and Vyāsa and Muddann (work to be started)
To extend this platform to other the contemporary literature works available in the public domain.

Authored by Pavithra Hanchagaiah, Omshivaprakash HI and Subhashish Panigrahi. Draws inspiration from another article published on Opensource.com under CC-BY-SA 4.0

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/openaccessweek-april-3-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-vachana-sanchaya

୭୯ ବର୍ଷରେ ସ୍ୱତନ୍ତ୍ର ଓଡ଼ିଶା: ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଏହାର ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର

subha — 2014-05-06T05:18:21Z

This article was published in online Odia magazine "The Amalekha". It covers a brief history of the book digitization initiates in Odia language, problems with access available content in ISCII standard, scope of Unicode content and Open Access, Odia Wikipedia's further use for public and contribution.

ଓଡ଼ିଶା ହେଉଛି ଭାରତର ପ୍ରଥମ ରାଜ୍ୟ ଯାହା ସ୍ୱାଧୀନ ଭାରତରେ ଭାଷା ଭିତ୍ତିରେ ପ୍ରଥମ ରାଜ୍ୟ ହେଲା । ତେବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା, ଯାହାକୁ ଭିତ୍ତି କରି ଓଡ଼ିଶା ଏକ ସ୍ୱତନ୍ତ୍ର ରାଜ୍ୟ ହେଲା ତାହା ନିକଟ ଅତୀତରେ ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ମାନ୍ୟତା ଲାଭ କରିଛି ନିଜର ୨୦୦୦ ବର୍ଷରୁ ଅଧିକ ବର୍ଷର ଗୌରବଜ୍ଜଳ ଇତିହାସକୁ ଜଗତ ସମ୍ମୁଖରେ ଉନ୍ମୋଚିତ କରି । ତେବେ ଏ ମାନ୍ୟତା ଏକ ଭାଷାଭାଷୀ ମୂଳ ବାସିନ୍ଦାଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ କେବଳ ଗୋଟିଏ ବିଶେଷ ସୁଯୋଗ ଆଣିଦିଏ-ତାହା ହେଲା ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶ ନିମନ୍ତେ କେନ୍ଦ୍ର ସରକାରଙ୍କର ୫୦୦ କୋଟିର ଅନୁଦାନ ଯାହା ଭାଷାର ନାନାଦି ସାଧନ ନିର୍ମାଣରେ ସାହାଯ୍ୟ କରେ । ତେବେ ଏକ ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶରେ କେଉଁ କେଉଁ ସାଧନ ଗୁରୁତ୍ତ୍ୱପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ଭୂମିକା ନିଭାଏ ତାହା ଜାଣିବା ନିତାନ୍ତ ଜରୁରୀ । ଜଗତର ପ୍ରଥମ ପାଞ୍ଚଟି ସବୁଠାରୁ ଅଧିକ କ‌ଥିତ ଭାଷା: ମାଣ୍ଡାରିନ (ଚାଇନିଜ ଭାଷାଗୋଷ୍ଠୀ), ଇଂରାଜୀ, ହିନ୍ଦୁସ୍ଥାନୀ (ହିନ୍ଦୀ, ଉର୍ଦ୍ଦୁ ଆଦି ଭାଷାସମୂହ), ସ୍ପାନିସ ଓ ରୁସିଆନ‌ ଭାଷାମାନ‌ଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଓଡ଼ିଆକୁ ତୁଳନା କଲେ ଆମ ସାମନାରେ ଅନେକ ଅନାଲୋଚିତ ତ‌ଥ୍ୟ ଉନ୍ମୁକ୍ତ ହେବ । ଉପରଲିଖିତ ପାଞ୍ଚୋଟିଯାକ ଭାଷା ଭିତରୁ କେଉଁଟି ବି ମୂଳ ଭାଷା ନୁହେଁ, ଅର୍ଥାତ, ଏ ସବୁଯାକ ଭାଷା ଏକ ମୂଳ ଭାଷାରୁ ବାହାରି ଭିନ୍ନ ଭିନ୍ନ ଭାଷା ଦ୍ୱାରା ପ୍ରଭାବିତ ହୋଇ ଏକ ସ୍ୱତନ୍ତ୍ର ଭାଷା ରୂପେ ଆଧୁନିକ ଦୁନିଆରେ ଜଣାଶୁଣା । ଏମାନଙ୍କ ଭିତରୁ ସବୁଠାରୁ ପୁରାତନ ଭାଷା ମାଣ୍ଡାରିନ ଭାଷାସମୂହର ମୂଳ ତ‌ତ୍କାଳୀନ କଳିଙ୍ଗ ବା ସେମାନଙ୍କ ଉଚ୍ଚାରଣରେ "କ୍ଳିଙ୍ଗ" ଭାଷାର ଢାଞ୍ଚାରେ ନିର୍ମିତ ଯାହା ପ୍ରମାଣିତ କରେ ଆମ ସାଧବ ପୁଅମାନେ ଦୂରଦେଶକୁ କେବଳ ଆମର ପାଟଲୁଗା ଆଉ ମସଲା ନେଇଯାଇ ନଥିଲେ, ଆମର ଭାଷା, ଚଳଣି, ଧର୍ମର ଅନେକ ଧାରା ଦକ୍ଷିଣ-ପୂର୍ବ ଏସିଆକୁ ନେଇଯାଇଥିଲେ । ତେବେ ଅନେକ ଐତିହାସିକ ତ‌ଥ୍ୟ ଅଭିଲେଖର ଅଭାବରେ ପ୍ରମାଣିତ ହୋଇନ‌ପାରି ଇତିହାସ ଆଢ଼ୁଆଳରେ ରହିଯାଇଛି । ଓଡ଼ିଆକୁ ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଭାଷା ମାନ୍ୟତା ପାଇଁ ବରିଷ୍ଠ ଭାଷାବିଦ ପଦ୍ମଶ୍ରୀ ଦେବୀପ୍ରସନ୍ନ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକଙ୍କ ନେତୃତ୍ୱରେ ଯେଉଁ କମିଟି ଗଢ଼ାଯାଇଥିଲା ସେଥିରେ ପ୍ରମାଣସ୍ୱରୂପ କେତେକ ଅଭିଲେଖର ଉପସ୍ଥାପନା କରାଯାଇଛି । କିନ୍ତୁ ଖାରବେଳଙ୍କ ଦ୍ୱାରା ଖୋଦିତ ଖଣ୍ଡଗିରିର ହାତୀଗୁମ୍ଫା ଶିଳାଲେଖକୁ ବାଦ‌ଦେଲେ ଆଉ କିଛି ପୁରୁଣା ଲେଖ ମିଳିପାରିଲା ନାହିଁ । ତେବେ ଭାଷାଟିଏ ଜଣାଶୁଣା ହେବା ପାଇଁ ଯେ ଏହା ପୁରାତନ ହେବା ଜରୁରୀ ନୁହେଁ ତାହା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ସ‌ହିତ ପୃଥିବୀର ୫ଟି ଭାଷାକୁ ତୁଳନା କଲେ ସ୍ପଷ୍ଟ ଜଣାପଡ଼େ । ତେବେ କିଭଳି ଭାବେ ଭାଷା ବିଶ୍ୱସାରା ବ୍ୟାପେ, ଏହା ଚିନ୍ତା କରିବାର ବେଳ ଆସିଛି ।

ଭାଷାଟିଏ ସମୃଦ୍ଧ ହୁଏ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାରରୁ । ଯେଉଁ ଭାଷା ସାଧାରଣ ଜୀବନ ସ‌ହ ଯେତେ ଅଙ୍ଗାଙ୍ଗୀ ଭାବେ ଜଡ଼ିତ ସେ ଭାଷା ସେତେ ଅଧିକ ପ୍ରବ‌ହ‌ମାନ । ଭାଷା ବ୍ୟାପେ ଲିଖନ ଓ ପଠନରୁ । ଜଗତର ସମସ୍ତ ଜଣାଶୁଣା ଭାଷାର ସାହିତ୍ୟ କେବଳ ସେହି ଭାଷାଭାଷୀ ଲୋକଙ୍କ ମଧ୍ୟରେ ସୀମିତ ନ‌ଥାଏ, ତାହା ଅନୁଦିତ ହୋଇ ବିଶ୍ୱସାହିତ୍ୟ ସମାଜରେ ପଠିତ ହୁଏ । ସରଳ ଭାଷାରେ କ‌ହିଲେ ଯେତେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ସାହିତ୍ୟ, ଓଡ଼ିଶାର କ‌ଥା ବିଶ୍ୱର ବାକି ଭାଷାମାନଙ୍କରେ ଲିଖିତ ହେବ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବିଶ୍ୱସ୍ତରରେ ସେତେ ପ୍ରସିଦ୍ଧି ଲାଭ କରିବ । ଭାଷାର ନିଅଁ ଦମ୍ଭିଲା ହୁଏ ସରକାରୀ ପ୍ରୋତ୍ସାହ‌ନରୁ । ଯେଉଁ ସମୟରେ ପଶ୍ଚିମ‌ବଙ୍ଗରେ ସରକାରୀଭାବେ ଇଂରାଜୀ ଶିକ୍ଷା, ଇଂରାଜୀରେ ସରକାରୀ ନ‌ଥିପ‌ତ୍ରରେ କାମ କରିବା ଉପରେ ଜୋର ଦିଆଯାଉଥିଲା ସେହି ଏକା ସମୟରେ ବଙ୍ଗଳାଦେଶରେ ବଙ୍ଗଳା ଭାଷାକୁ ସରକାରୀ କଳରେ ବାଧ୍ୟତାମୂଳକ କରି, ଶିକ୍ଷାଦୀକ୍ଷାର ମାଧ୍ୟମ କରିବା କ୍ଷେତ୍ରରେ ଆନ୍ଦୋଳନ ଚାଲିଥିଲା । ଏହି ଆନ୍ଦୋଳନରେ ପ୍ରାଣବଳି ଦେଇଥିଲେ ଅନେକ ଭାଷା ପ୍ରେମୀ ଯାହାଙ୍କ ସ୍ମୃତିରେ ଇଉନେସ୍କୋ ଫେବ୍ରୁଆରି ୧୫କୁ ଅନ୍ତର୍ଜାତୀୟ ମାତୃଭାଷା ଦିବସ ଭାବେ ପାଳନ କରେ । ଯେଉଁ ଭାଷା ଯେତେ ସ‌ହଜରେ ଅଧିକ ଲୋକଙ୍କ ପାଖରେ ପ‌ହ‌ଞ୍ଚିପାରେ ସେ ଭାଷା ସେତେ ଅଧିକ ପଠିତ ହୁଏ । ଏ ତିନୋଟି ମୁଖ୍ୟ ପଦଃକ୍ଷେପ ଭିତରୁ ଜଣେ ସାଧାରଣ ପାଠକ ଓ ଲେଖକର ହାତରେ ପ୍ରଥମ ଓ ତୃତୀୟଟି ସମ୍ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ଭାବେ ର‌ହିଛି । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାରେ ଅଧିକ ବ‌ହିପ‌ତ୍ର ପଢ଼ିବା, ତାହାକୁ ଅନ୍ୟଭାଷାରେ ଅନୁବାଦ କରିବା, ନିଜ ଅଞ୍ଚଳର, ଗୋଷ୍ଠୀର ଅନେକ ନିଆରା ପରମ୍ପରା, ଲୋକସାହିତ୍ୟକୁ ବିଶ୍ୱର ବାକି ଭାଷାରେ ଲେଖି ଜ୍ଞାନର ବିତରଣ କରିବା ଦ୍ୱାରା ଅନେକ ଅନାଲୋଚିତ ବିଷୟବସ୍ତୁ ଉପରେ ପାଠକର ଆଗ୍ରହ ବଢ଼େ । ଏହା ପରୋକ୍ଷରେ ସାହିତ୍ୟ, ଭାଷା, ପରମ୍ପରା ଓ ପର୍ଯ୍ୟଟନର ବିକାଶର ପ‌ଥ ପ୍ରସାରଣ କରେ । ଭାବନ୍ତୁ, ଯଦି ଭାଷାଟିଏକୁ ଛିଡ଼ା କରାଇବା ପାଇଁ ଆନ୍ଦୋଳନ କରୁଥିବା ଯୁବଗୋଷ୍ଠୀଙ୍କ ଭିତରୁ ଇଂରାଜୀରେ ବଙ୍ଗର ଜନ‌ଜୀବନ ଉପରେ ଲେଖିବା ପାଇଁ ରବୀନ୍ଦ୍ରନାଥଟିଏ ବାହାରି ନ‌ଥାନ୍ତା ତାହେଲେ ଆଜି ବଙ୍ଗଳା ଭାଷା ବିଶ୍ୱର ସ‌ପ୍ତମ କ‌ଥିତ ଭାଷା ଭାବେ ପରିଗଣିତ ହୋଇଥାନ୍ତା କି?

ପୁରୁଣା ବ‌ହିର ଅଭିଲେଖ:

୧୮୧୧ ରୁ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରି ୧୯୫୦ ମସିହା ମଧ୍ୟରେ ପ୍ରକାଶିତ ଅନେକ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବ‌ହି ପୁରୁଣା କାଗଜ, ରକ୍ଷଣାବେକ୍ଷଣା ଅଭାବରୁ ନଷ୍ଟ ହେଇଯାଉଥିବା ଲକ୍ଷ କରି ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱରର ସୃଜନିକା ଦ୍ୱାରା ସେସବୁ ବ‌ହିର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ସଂସ୍କରଣ ତିଆରି କାମ କିଛି ବର୍ଷ ତଳେ ଆରମ୍ଭ ହୋଇଥିଲା । ଏଯାବତ ପାଖାପାଖି ୭୪୦ ଖଣ୍ଡ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବ‌ହି, ପ‌ତ୍ରପ‌ତ୍ରିକା ଆଦି ଡିଜିଟାଲ ରୂପରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଯାହା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ଇତିହାସରେ ଏଯାବତ ସର୍ବାଧିକ । ନ୍ୟାସନାଲ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚ୍ୟୁଟ ଅଫ ଟେକନେଲୋଜି (NIT), ରାଉରକେଲା ସ‌ହ‌ଯୋଗରେ ସୃଜନିକା ବ‌ହିସବୁକୁ ସ୍କାନ କରି ପରେ ସ୍ୱେଚ୍ଛାସେବୀମାନଙ୍କ ସ‌ହାୟତାରେ ପିଡ଼ିଏଫ ଫର୍ମାଟରେ ଏହି ବ‌ହି ଓ ପାଣ୍ଡୁଲିପି ଆଦିର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ଅଭିଲେଖ ତିଆରି କରିଛନ୍ତି । ଅଧୁନା oaob.nitrkl.ac.in ରେ ୨୪୦ ଖଣ୍ଡ ବ‌ହି ଡାଉନଲୋଡ଼ ପାଇଁ ଖୋଲାରେ ବିତରଣ ହେଉଥିବା ବେଳେ ବାକି ବ‌ହି ସୃଜନିକା ଦ୍ୱାରା ସିଡ଼ି/ଡିଭିଡ଼ି/ପେନ‌ଡ୍ରାଇଭରେ ମିଳୁଛି । ଏହି ବ‌ହି ଭିତରେ ରହିଛି ସମ୍ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣଚନ୍ଦ୍ର ଭାଷାକୋଷ, ୧୮୧୧ରୁ ୧୯୪୨ ଭିତରେ ସଂକଳିତ ପାଖାପାଖି ୨୬ ଗୋଟି ଅଭିଧାନ, ୧୮୫୦ରୁ ୧୯୫୦ ଭିତରର ୧୦୦ ବର୍ଷରେ ଛପାଯାଇଥିବା ଅନେକ ବିଜ୍ଞାନ, ସାହିତ୍ୟ, ଇତିହାସ ଓ ଗବେଷଣାଧର୍ମୀ ବ‌ହି । ୬୧ଟି ପ‌ତ୍ରିକା ଓ ୧୪ଟି ତ‌ତ୍କାଳୀନ ଖବରକାଗଜରୁ ପାଖାପାଖି ୧,୨୦,୦୦୦ ପୃଷ୍ଠା ଡିଜିଟାଲ ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ସଂରକ୍ଷିତ କରାଯାଇପାରିଛି । ନିକଟ ଅତୀତରେ ସଂସ୍କୃତି ବିଭାଗ ତରଫରୁ ପୁରାତନ ଅନେକ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବ‌ହିର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ସଂସ୍କରଣ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରାଯାଇଛି । ତେବେ କି କି ବ‌ହିର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ରୂପ ସରକାରଙ୍କ ତରଫରୁ କରାଯାଉଛି ତାହା ଅଗୋଚରରେ ରହିଛି । ୨୦୦୪ ପରଠାରୁ ଓଡ଼ିଶା ସରକାରଙ୍କ ଦ୍ୱାରା ପ୍ରକାଶିତ ଉତ୍କଳ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ (ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ) ଓ Orissa Review (ଇଂରାଜୀରେ) http://orissa.gov.in/e-magazine/utkalprasanga/utkalprasanga.htm ୱେବସାଇଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଯେଉଁଥିରେ ଓଡ଼ିଶା ସମ୍ବନ୍ଧିତ ଅନେକ ଗବେଷଣା ସମ୍ବଳିତ ରଚନା ସ୍ଥାନ ପାଇଛି । orissabigyanacademy.nic.in ୱେବସାଇଟରେ ଅନେକ ଉପାଦେୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବିଜ୍ଞାନ ଲେଖା, ବିଶେଷ କରି ବିଜ୍ଞାନ ଦିଗନ୍ତ ପ‌ତ୍ରିକାର ସଂଖ୍ୟାସବୁ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଯାହା ପଢ଼ାଯାଇପାରିବ । ପ୍ରମୁଖ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଖବରକାଗଜ ଓ ପ‌ତ୍ରପ‌ତ୍ରିକାମାନଙ୍କର ୱେବସାଇଟରେ ଖବର ଓ ଲେଖାସବୁ ରହିଛି ଯାହା ଭିତରୁ କିଛି ଆର୍କାଇଭ ହୋଇଛି ଆଉ କିଛି ହୋଇନାହିଁ । ତେବେ ଉପରେ ବର୍ଣ୍ଣିତ ସମସ୍ତ ବ‌ହି କେବଳ ପଢ଼ିହେବ । ତାହା ନାଁ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପ କରି ଖୋଜିହେବ ନାଁ ଲେଖାକୁ ପୁନ‌ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର କରିହେବ ।

ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଟାଇପ କରିବା:

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାରେ ପ୍ରଥମ ଛାପାକଳରୁ ଛପା ହେବା ପରଠାରୁ ଆଜିଯାଏ ହୁଏତ ଅସଂଖ୍ୟ ବ‌ହି ଛପାଯାଇଥିବ । ତେବେ ସେସବୁକୁ ଖୋଜିବସିଲେ ସ‌ହଜରେ ମିଳିବ କି? ଏଠାରେ ଆଉ ଏକ ବିରାଟ ଛିଡ଼ାହୁଏ ଆମ ଆଗରେ, ଯାହା ହେଲା ସ‌ହଜଲବ୍ଧ ଅଭିଲେଖ ବା ଆର୍କାଇଭ । ଯଦି ମୋତେ ଗୀତଗୋବିନ୍ଦ କାବ୍ୟର ଏକ ପଙ୍‌କ୍ତି ପଢ଼ିବାର ଅଛି ତାହେଲେ ମୁଁ ଜୟଦେବଙ୍କ ଲିଖିତ ବିରଳ ତାଳପ‌ତ୍ର ପୋଥିଟି ଖୋଜିବି କି? ମୁଁ ପ୍ରଥମେ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଖୋଜିବସିବି ଲାଇବ୍ରେରି ଯିବା ଆଗରୁ । ଆଧୁନିକ ଯୁଗରେ ମଣିଷର ବ‌ହି ସ‌ହ ସମ୍ବନ୍ଧ ଯେତେ ଘୁଞ୍ଚି ଘୁଞ୍ଚି ଯାଉଛି ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ଉପରେ ନିର୍ଭରଶୀଳତା ସେତେ ବଢ଼ି ବଢ଼ି ଯାଉଛି । ତେବେ ନୂତନ-ପୁରାତନ ବ‌ହିର ସବୁ ପାଠ ଯଦି ସ‌ହଜରେ ମିଳିପାରନ୍ତା ତେବେ ପାଠକଟିଏ ଯେତେବେଳେ ଯାହା ଚାହିଁବ ତାହା ପଢ଼ିପାରିବ । ଯେଉଁ ଭାଷାରେ ଏ ସାଧନ ଯେତେ ଅଧିକ ସେ ଭାଷା ପାଠକ ତିଆରି କରିବାରେ ସେତେ ସଫଳ । ଏ ବିଷୟରେ ଭାବିଲେ ଆମ ମନରେ ଯେଉଁ ପ୍ରଥମ ଭାଷାଟି ଉଙ୍କିମାରେ ତାହା ହେଲା ଇଂରାଜୀ । ଆମେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବା ଓଡ଼ିଶା ବିଷୟରେ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ କିଛି ଖୋଜିବା ବେଳେ ଯାହା ଗୁଗଲରେ ଟାଇପ କରୁ ସେ ବି ହେଉଛି ଇଂରାଜୀ ଭାଷା । ତେବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପ କରି ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ପଢ଼ିବାରେ ଓ ଲେଖିବାରେ ବାଟ ବି ଖୋଲିଛି ତାହା ଉଣା ଅଧିକେ ଅନେକେ ଜାଣି ନ‌ଥିବେ । ସମ୍ବିଧାନ ସ୍ୱିକୃତୀପ୍ରାପ୍ତ ପ୍ରାୟ ସମସ୍ତ ଭାଷା କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରରେ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାରଯୋଗ୍ୟ । ଓଡ଼ିଶାରେ ଆଜିର ସମୟରେ ଅଧିକାଂଶ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାରକାରୀ ମାଇକ୍ରୋସଫ୍ଟ ଉଇଣ୍ଡୋଜର ଅପରେଟିଙ୍ଗ ସିଷ୍ଟମ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର କରିଥାନ୍ତି । ଉଇଣ୍ଡୋଜ ଭିସ୍ତା ନାମକ ଅପରେଟିଙ୍ଗ ସିଷ୍ଟମର ସସ୍କରଣ ଆସିବା ଯାଏଁ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଲେଖାପଢ଼ା ସମ୍ପୁର୍ଣ୍ଣ ଭାବେ ସମ୍ଭବ ହୋଇପାରୁନ‌ଥଲା । ତେବେ ଭିସ୍ତା ପରଠାରୁ ଏହି ଅସୁବିଧା ଆପାତ‌ତଃ ଦୂର ହେଲା । ଆଜିର ସମୟରେ ବିଭିନ୍ନ ଅପରେଟିଙ୍ଗ ସିଷ୍ଟମ ଯଥା: ମାଇକ୍ରୋସଫ୍ଟ ଉଇଣ୍ଡୋଜ, ଲିନ‌କ୍ସ ଓ ଆପଲ ମ୍ୟାକ ଆଦିରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ପଢ଼ିବା ଓ ଲେଖିବାରେ ବିଶେଷ କିଛି ଅସୁବିଧା ପ୍ରାୟ ନାହିଁ । କିନ୍ତୁ ଯଦି ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷର ଚିହ୍ନୁଥିବା ଯେକୌଣସି କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାରକାରୀକୁ କେହି ପଚାରନ୍ତି ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ କିଛି ଟାଇପ କରି ଲେଖିବା ନିମନ୍ତେ, ୧୦୦ରୁ ଜଣେ କି ଦୁଇଜଣ ନିଜର କ୍ଷମତା ପ୍ରକାଶ କରିବେ କି ସେ ସନ୍ଦେହର କ‌ଥା । ଏହାର ମୂଳ କାରଣ ହେଲା ସ୍କ୍ୁଲ, କଲେଜ ପଢ଼ାରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପିଙ୍ଗ କରିବା କ୍ଷେତ୍ରରେ କିଛି ତାଲିମ ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀମାନେ ପାଇନ‌ଥାନ୍ତି । ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଯେ ଲେଖିହେବ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଏହାକୁ ଇଂରାଜୀ ଭଳି ସ‌ହଜରେ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର କରିହେବ ଏହା ଅନେକ‌ଙ୍କୁ ଆକାଶ କଇଆଁ ଭଳି ଲାଗିବ । ତେବେ ଏହା ଶତକଡ଼ା ଶହେ ସମ୍ବବ । ତେବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପ କରି ଲେଖିବାରେ ଯେଉଁ ମୂଳ ପ୍ରତିବନ୍ଧକଟି ଅଛି ତାହା ହେଲେ ନାନାଦି ଅନ୍ଧବିଶ୍ୱାସ । କେବଳ ବିରାଡ଼ିକୁ ଦେଖି ପଛକୁ ଗାଡ଼ି ନେବା ଅନ୍ଧବିଶ୍ୱାସ ନୁହେଁ, ଭାଷାଶିକ୍ଷଣ କ୍ଷେତ୍ରରେ ମଧ୍ୟ ଅନେକ ନ‌କଲି ଅନ୍ଧବିଶ୍ୱାସ ଅଛି । ତା ଭିତରୁ ପ୍ରଥମଟି ହେଲା ଅନେକେ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖିବା କ‌ଥା ଆସିଲେ ଭାବି ବସନ୍ତି ଛାପାଖାନାରେ ଛପା ହେଉଥିବା ବ‌ହି ବାବଦରେ । ଆଜି ଡିଜିଟାଲ ପ୍ରକାଶନ (ଡିଟିପି)ର ବ‌ହୁଳତା ଆଗକାଳର ବିଶାଳକାୟ ଛାପାକଳ ସବୁକୁ ଅତୀତକୁ ଠେଲିଦେଇଛି । କିନ୍ତୁ ଆଜି ବି ଆମର ଛପା ପାଇଁ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର ହେଉଥିବା ସଫ୍ଟ୍ୱାରଠୁ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରି ଲେଖାରେ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର ହେଉଥିବା ଫଣ୍ଟ ବା କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରର ଅକ୍ଷରସଜାଣି ମାନ‌ଧାତା ଅମଳର । ନ‌ବେ ଦଶକର ଶେଷ ଆଡ଼କୁ ଯେଉଁ ISCII (Indian Script Code for Information Interchange) ନାମକ ମାନ‌କର ଆରମ୍ଭ ହୋଇଥିଲା କିଛି ବର୍ଷ ପରେ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ ନାମକ ନୂଆ ମାନ‌କ ତାକୁ ଆଜି ବି ଦୂରେଇପାରିନାହିଁ । ଫଳତଃ ଆଜିଯାଏ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଡିଟିପି କରାଯାଇଥିବା ପାଖାପାଖି ସମସ୍ତ ଲେଖା ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ନା ଖୋଜିହେବ ନା ଆଉ କାହା ସଙ୍ଗେ ବାଣ୍ଟି କରିହେବ । କେଇ ଦଶନ୍ଧି ତଳେ ଆପଣଙ୍କ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଫଣ୍ଟ ନ ଥିଲେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷର ବଦଳରେ ଯେଉଁ ଚାରିକୋଣିଆ ଘର ଦେଖିବାକୁ ମିଳୁଥିଲା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଡିଟିପିରେ ଆଜି ବି ଯେଉଁ ଫଣ୍ଟ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର ହେଉଛି ସେ ସେଇ ଏକା ଫଳ ଦେବ । ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶରେ ଆଧୁନିକ ଜ୍ଞାନ‌କୌଶଳ ବିଶେଷ ଜରୁରୀ ଯାହା ଗତାନୁଗତିକ ଏହି ପ୍ରଚଳିତ ଟାଇପିଙ୍ଗକୁ ଦୂରକୁ ଫିଙ୍ଗିଦେବାକୁ ପଡ଼ିବ। ଦୁଃଖର ବିଷୟ ଆମର ପ୍ରାୟ ସମସ୍ତ ଖବରକାଗଜଙ୍କର ପ୍ରକାଶନ ଏହି ସବୁ ISCII ଫଣ୍ଟରେ ଲେଖାହୋଇଥିବାରୁ ସେସବୁ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଖୋଜାଯାଇପାରିବ ନାହିଁ ।

ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ ମାଧ୍ୟମ (Unicode standards):

ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ ଏକ ଆନ୍ତର୍ଜାତୀକ ମାନ‌କ ଯାହା ଏକ ଭାଷାକୁ ଅନ୍ୟ ଭାଷାର ସମକକ୍ଷ କରାଇଥାଏ ଓ ଏହା ସଙ୍ଗେ ସଙ୍ଗେ ଏଥିରେ ଲେଖାଥିବା ଲେଖାକୁ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ସ‌ହଜରେ ଖୋଜିହୁଏ, କପି କରି ବାକିମାନଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ବିତରଣ କରିହୁଏ ଆଉ ସବୁଠାରୁ ବଡ଼ କ‌ଥା ହେଲା ଏହା ପାଇଁ କୌଣସି ଫଣ୍ଟ ଇନଷ୍ଟଲ କରିବାକୁ ପଡ଼େନାହିଁ । ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ବି ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ର ବିକାଶ ହୋଇଛି । ହେଲେ ଆମର ଖବରକାଗଜ ସମେତ ବାକି ସମସ୍ତ ଛାପାଖାନା ଆଜିଯାଏ ପୁରୁଣା ISCII ମାନ‌କରେ କରା‌ଯାଏ । ତେବେ ଛାପାଖାନାସବୁ ଯେ ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ର ଉପ‌ଯୋଗୀତା ବୁଝିନାହାନ୍ତି ବା ଆବଶ୍ୟକ‌ତା ଅନୁଭବ କରିନାହାନ୍ତି କିମ୍ବା ନିଜର ଗତାନୁଗତିକ ଧାରାରୁ ବାହାରି କିଛି ଅଲଗା କରିବାକୁ ଇଚ୍ଛୁକ ନୁହ‌ଁନ୍ତି ତାହା ନୁହେଁ, କିନ୍ତୁ ନୂଆ କିଛି ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର କରିବାକୁ ପଛଘୁଞ୍ଚା ଦେଉଛନ୍ତି । କିଛି ମାସ ତଳେ ସ୍କାଇବସ (Scribus) ସଫ୍ଟ୍ୱାର ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର କରି ତେଲୁଗୁ ଖବରକାଗଜ "ପ୍ରଜାଶକ୍ତି" ଇଉନିକୋଡ଼ ଫଣ୍ଟରେ ଖବରକାଗଜ ଛପାଇ ଇତିହାସ ତିଆରି କଲା । ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ବି ଏହା ଅସମ୍ଭବ ନୁହେଁ । ତେବେ ଆମ ପାଖରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଥିବା ବ‌ହିଗୁଡ଼ିକ ଯେତେବେଳ ଯାଏଁ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ନ କରାଯାଇଛି ସେଯାଏଁ କେହି ସେସବୁକୁ ଲାଇବ୍ରେରି ନ ଯାଇ ପଢ଼ିପାରିବେ ନାହିଁ । ଆଜିର ତାରିଖରେ ୨୫-୩୦ ବର୍ଷ ବୟସରୁ କମ ପ୍ରାୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ହୁଏତ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷର ଚିହ୍ନିବାକୁ ବି ହୁଡ଼ିବେ । ଭାଷା କେବଳ ଗପ-କବିତା ରଚନା ଓ ଉପାଧୀ-ସମ୍ମାନ ପ୍ରଦାନରେ ସମୃଦ୍ଧ ହୁଏ ନାହିଁ । ଯଦି ଆମ ଭାଷାର ବଡ଼ବଡ଼ୁଆମାନେ ଭାଷାକୁ ସାଧାରଣ ଜୀବନରେ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର ନ କରିଥାନ୍ତେ ତାହେଲେ ଆମେ ଆଜି ନିଜକୁ ଭାଷା ଭିତ୍ତିରେ ଏକ ରାଜ୍ୟ ଭାବରେ ପରିଚୟ ଦେଉନ‌ଥାନ୍ତୁ । ଆଉ ମଧୁବାବୁ-ଫକୀରମୋହ‌ନ-ଗଙ୍ଗାଧର-ରାଧାନାଥ ପ୍ରମୁଖ ନିଜ ସମୟଠାରୁ ଯଥେଷ୍ଟ ଆଗରେ ଚାଲୁଥିଲେ । ସେମାନଙ୍କ ଲେଖା ଆଜି ମାନ‌କ ଲେଖାର ମୂଳଦୁଆ ଗଢ଼ିଛି । ଆଜି ଆମେ ଯଦି ଆମ ସମୟର ସମତାଳରେ ନ ଚାଲି ଅପ୍ରଚଳିତ ଟେକନୋଲୋଜିକୁ ଆପଣାଇ ପୃଷ୍ଠା ପରେ ପୃଷ୍ଠା ରଚନା କରିଚାଲିବା ତାହା ଭବିଷ୍ୟତର ପିଢ଼ି ନିମନ୍ତେ ଉପଯୋଗୀ ହେବ ତ? ଆମେ ସମସ୍ତେ ଯଦି ଆମ ଚାରିପାଖର ଘଟଣାବଳୀକୁ ଟିକେ ନିରେଖି ଦେଖିବା ତାହେଲେ ଅନେକ ବିଷୟ ଫର୍ଚା ହୋଇ‌ ଦିଶିବ । ସମ‌ଭାବରେ ଦେଖିଲେ ଯେତେବେଳେ ଭାଷାର ପାଠକ ସଂଖ୍ୟା କମି କମି ଯାଉଛି ସେତେବେଳେ ଆଉ କିଛି ବ‌ହି ଛପାଇ, କିଛି କମିଟି ତିଆରି କରିବା ଠାରୁ ସ୍କୁଲ, କଲେଜ ସ୍ତରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶିକ୍ଷାକୁ ସମ୍ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ବାଧ୍ୟତାମୂଳକ କରି ପିଲାଙ୍କୁ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର, ମଜା ମଜା ଖେଳ ଆଦି ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶିକ୍ଷା ଦେବା ନିତାନ୍ତ ଜରୁରୀ । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଭାଷା ମାନ୍ୟତା ପାଇବା ପରେ ଯେଉଁ ୫୦୦ କୋଟି ଅର୍ଥ ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶରେ ଖର୍ଚ୍ଚ ହେବା ନିମନ୍ତେ ଯୋଜନା ହେଉଛି ଏଥିରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର ଓ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ଶିକ୍ଷାଦାନ ଏକ ମୁଖ୍ୟ ପଦଃକ୍ଷେପ ହେବା ଉଚିତ । ଆମ ଭାଷାରେ ଏଯାବତ ଲେଖାଯାଇଥିବା ଅନେକ ପୋଥିପୁସ୍ତକ ଅଭିଲେଖାଗାରରେ ଧୀରେ ଧୀରେ କୀଟଙ୍କ ଦାଉରୁ ନଷ୍ଟ ହୋଇଯାଉଛି । ସେସବୁକୁ ସ୍କାନ କରି ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ମାଗଣାରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଇଲେ ତାହା ଅନେକଙ୍କ ଜ୍ଞାନ ପିପାସା ମେଣ୍ଟାଇବ । ଓଡ଼ିଶାରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାରେ ଲେଖାଥିବା ପୃଥିବୀର ସର୍ବାଧିକ ତାଳପ‌ତ୍ର ପୋଥି ଅଛି (ଯାହା ୨୦,୦୦୦ ରୁ ଅଧିକ) । ଏଥିରେ ଅନେକ ମୁଖ୍ୟତଃ ରାଜ୍ୟ ସଂଗ୍ରହାଳୟରେ ରଖା‌ଯାଇଛି ଆଉ କିଛି ବ୍ୟକ୍ତିଗତ ମାଲିକାନାରେ ରହିଛି । ଏହି ସବୁ ପୋଥିର ଲେଖାକୁ ମଧ୍ୟ ସର୍ବସାଧାରଣରେ ଉନ୍ମୋଚନ କରିବାର ମାନସିକ ପରିବର୍ତ୍ତନର ଆବଶ୍ୟକ‌ତା ରହିଛି ।

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ: କପିରାଇଟ ନ‌ଥିବା ଏକ ଜ୍ଞାନ‌କୋଷ, ଯହିଁରେ ସମସ୍ତେ ଲେଖିପାରିବେ

ଏକ ଭାଷାର ଚଳନ୍ତି ଇତିହାସ ହେଲା ଜ୍ଞାନ‌କୋଷ ବା ଏନସାଇକ୍ଲୋପିଡ଼ିଆ ଯେଉଁଥିରେ ଜଗତର ସମସ୍ତ ଜ୍ଞାନ ସାଇତାହୋଇ ରହିଥାଏ । ଗୋପାଳ ପ୍ରହରାଜ ଓ ବିନୋଦ କାନୁନ‌ଗୋଙ୍କ ପରେ ବିଶେଷ କିଛି ଉଦ୍ୟମ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଜ୍ଞାନ‌କୋଷ ଲିଖନ ପାଇଁ ହୋଇପାରିନ‌ଥିଲା । ଆଧୁନିକ ପାଠକଙ୍କ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟର ଜ୍ଞାନ ଆହରଣର ଭବିଷ୍ୟତକୁ ଆଖିରେ ରଖି ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଆରମ୍ଭ ହୋଇଥିଲା ୨୦୦୨ରେ ପ୍ରଥମ ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷାର ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଭାବରେ । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ or.wikipedia.org ରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ । ଧରାବନ୍ଧା ହାତଗଣତି ସଂକଳକଙ୍କ ଦ୍ୱାରା ଏହାର ସମ୍ପାଦନା ନ କରି ଏଥିରେ ସମସ୍ତ ଜନସାଧାରଣଙ୍କୁ ଯୋଡ଼ିବା ଉଦ୍ଦେଶ୍ୟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ଆରମ୍ଭ । ଏଯାବତ ୫୩୦୦ରୁ ଅଧିକ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ଏଥିରେ ଲେଖାହୋଇସାରିଛି । ତେବେ ଅଧିକ ଉତ୍ସାହୀ ଲେଖକଙ୍କ ଯୋଗଦାନରେ ଏହି ଭଳି ସାମୁହିକ ଉଦ୍ୟମ ଫଳବତୀ ହୋଇପାରିବ।

ପାଠକ, ସାହିତ୍ୟାନୁରାଗୀ, ଭାଷା ଗବେଷକ, ଭାଷାର କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ବିକାଶ କରୁଥିବା ବିଜ୍ଞାନୀ ଏକ ମଞ୍ଚରେ ଆଲୋଚନା କରି ଭାଷାର ବିଭିନ୍ନ ସାଧନ ନିର୍ଣ୍ଣୟ କରିପାରିଲେ ଓଡ଼ିଆର ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଭାଷା ମାନ୍ୟତା ସଫଳ ହେବ । ଯୁବଶକ୍ତିକୁ ବିନିଯୋଗ କରି ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶରେ ମୁଖ୍ୟ ସମସ୍ୟାଗୁଡ଼ିକର ସମାଧାନ କରା‌ଯାଇପାରିବ । ପାଠକର ଆବଶ୍ୟକ‌ତା ଜାଣି ପାଠର ମାଧ୍ୟମ ବଦଳାଇପାରିଲେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ନିଶ୍ଚିତ ଜଗତର ଅନ୍ୟାନ୍ୟ ଜଣାଶୁଣା ଭାଷା ଭିତରୁ ଏକ ହେବ ।

ଅଧିକ ପଠନ:

୧. ପୁରୁଣା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବ‌ହି ଡିଜିଟାଲ ରୂପରେ: oaob.nitrkl.ac.in

୨. ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ, ଏକ ଖୋଲା ଜ୍ଞାନ‌କୋଷ: or.wikipedia.org

୩. ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପ କରିବା ଉପରେ ଶିକ୍ଷଣ: or.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Typing

୪. ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖିବା ପାଇଁ ସାଧନ (ମାଇକ୍ରୋସଫ୍ଟ ଉଇଣ୍ଡୋଜ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାରକାରୀଙ୍କ ନିମନ୍ତେ): bhashaindia.com/ilit/Oriya.aspx

୫. ଗୋପାଳଚନ୍ଦ୍ର ପ୍ରହରାଜଙ୍କ ଭାଷାକୋଷ: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/praharaj (ଡାଉନଲୋଡ଼ ନିମନ୍ତେ bitly.com/bhashakosha ଦେଖନ୍ତୁ)

ଲେଖକ ପରିଚୟ: ଶୁଭାଶିଷ ପାଣିଗ୍ରାହୀ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ତ‌ଥା ଅନ୍ୟାନ୍ୟ ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷାର ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର ଉପରେ କାମକରୁଥିବା ଜଣେ ଗବେଷକ । ସେ ଅଧୁନା ବେଙ୍ଗାଳୁରୁସ୍ଥିତ ସେଣ୍ଟର ଫର ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ଏଣ୍ଡ ସୋସାଇଟିର ଆକସେସ-ଟୁ-ନଲେଜ ପ୍ରୋଗ୍ରାମର ପ୍ରୋଗ୍ରାମ ଅଫିସର ଭାବେ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟରତ । ଓଡ଼ିଶାରେ କିଟ ବିଶ୍ୱବିଦ୍ୟାଳୟ, କଳିଙ୍ଗ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚ୍ୟୁଟ ଅଫ ସୋସିଆଲ ସାଇନ୍ସେସ (କିସ), ଭାରତୀୟ ଜନସଂଚାର ସଂସ୍ଥାନ, ଢେଙ୍କାନାଳ (IIMC) ଆଦି ଅନେକ ଶିକ୍ଷାନୁଷ୍ଠାନରେ ସେ କରି ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ଶିକ୍ଷାର ବିକାଶ ନିମନ୍ତେ ଗବେଷଣା କରୁଛନ୍ତି । ଭାରତ ଓ ବିଦେଶରେ ସେ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶ ଉପରେ ଅନେକ କର୍ମଶାଳା ଓ ଆଲୋଚନାଚକ୍ରରେ ଭାଗ ନେଇ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଭାଷାର ଆବଶ୍ୟକ‌ତା ଉପରେ ଆଲୋଚନା କରିଛନ୍ତି । subhashish@cis-india.org ରେ ତାଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଇ-ମେଲରେ ଯୋଗାଯୋଗ କରିପାରିବେ ।

Read the article published in Amalekha here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/subhashish-panigrahi-article-in-amalekha

11th Century Kannada Literature Now on Wikisource

subha — 2014-04-06T05:01:14Z

This blog post by Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI was edited by Rohini Lakshane for DNA. It was first edited by Subhashish Panigrahi, CIS-A2K on the Wikimedia Foundation blog where it was first published.

Click to read the post republished on DNA on March 30, 2014. The original posted on Wikimedia Blog can be seen here.

In Kannada poetry, Vachana Sahitya is a form of rhythmic writing that evolved in the eleventh century and flourished in the twelevth, as a part of the “Lingayatha” movement. More than 259 Vachanakaras (Vachana writers) have compiled over 11,000 vachanas. 21,000 of these verses, which were published in the 15-volume “Samagra Vachana Samputa” by the government of Karnataka have been digitised. Two Wikimedians, along with a Kannada linguist and author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy, are involved in the Unicode conversions, corrections and writing preface for these verses. The entire work is now available as a standalone project called “Vachana Sanchaya” and ready to enrich Kannada Wikisource.

This project was started a year ago when Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash was trying to help Professor O.L. Naghabhushana Swamy and Kannada author and publisher Vasudhendra access the vachana (verses) of Vachana Sanchaya. Swamy had trouble using publicly available content on Vachanas since the data was in ASCII standard and searching the text was a huge problem. I (Pavithra Hanchagaiah) started to help gather information about vachanas and document it in Unicode by writing scripts for open source software. Further discussions were made to get thousands of vachanas in the form of a database, so that they could be made easily searchable with an index. This demanded that we build a platform supporting all these activities, which would help the linguistic researchers, students and members of the general public who have an interest in reading and studying Vachana literature. With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model, and his colleague Devaraju started building it. In the meantime I was running various scripts to fix errors in conversion of ASCII text to Unicode, confirming that the data was ready to consume by the modules developed for concordance. We spent weekends and holidays executing this project from home. With the constant feedback and guidance from Mr Swamy and Vasudendra, we learnt how concordance of text is used by researchers and what would make it easier for them to research on Vachana Sahitya. Omshivaprakash worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements – free and open source software technologies were used to keep the platform active while managing the entire project. I provided critical hacks for digitization and gave feedback through suggestions.

Working System

Currently, the system has around 200,000 unique words in its repository. Vachana Sanchaya is meant for research rather than just a repository of text on the web. While you search the words on our system, you can see who has used the word in all Vachanas. To make the research more readable, we highlight the text searched in each Vachana that would be displayed. To repeat the search for a specific Vachanakara (poet) you just need to click on his name on the graph on the results page. We have used MediaWiki’s jquery-ime input tool architecture that helped us provide a feature to directly enter Kannada text in Unicode for searches. So just type, and get results!

Public Response

We are glad to see people accessing vachanas from our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ channels. There have been approximately 500,000 pageviews to our site in the first few months of our platform’s public launch. Interestingly, commonly searched Kannada words like “ಕರ್ಮ”(Karma en:Work/Deed) , “ಸತ್ಯ” (Sathya -en:Truthfulness ) and “ನದಿ” (River) have resulted in quick and easy results.

Plans for the Future

Our system is extensible with respect to adding new feature – we have a review desk for researchers to help us with the review of content. Later we will also be adding required references to Vachanas from various research works that have been done around this literature. The content is available to the public through OpenData API and will be distributed as public domain through Wikisource once the review work is complete. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers and anyone interested in working around building linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages. This system is meant to evolves around other works rather than having to change and re-invent the wheel for more such projects. Vachana Sahitya will further help us to initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researchers get together to tag the words, glossary etc in the coming days. We can also fulfill the need of various language tools like spelling and grammar checker for users through crowd-sourcing the development. The next projects under the “Kannada Sanchaya” are Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya which are in the pipeline with initial phases of work underway. Our idea is to extend this platform from Vyasa to Muddanna and possibly the contemporary literature work available in the public domain.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-march-30-2014-rohini-lakshane-11th-century-kannada-literature-now-on-wikisource

Digitize any Book in the Public Domain

subha — 2014-04-03T08:41:18Z

The article is about a mass scale digitization project for Kannada WikiSource by two Wikipedians.

This was originally published in Opensource.com on March 27, 2014.

A form of poetry in India called Vachana sahitya is part of the popular Indian language, Kannada. It evolved in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th as part of the religious Lingayatha movement. Since that time, more than 259 Vachana writers, called Vachanakaru, have compiled over 11,000 Vachanas (verses).

21,000 of these verses were digitally published into 15 volumes, called Samagra Vachana Samputa, by the government of Karnataka. These volumes were then turned into a standalone project called Vachana Sanchaya; this project was taken on by two Kannada Wikimedians, a Kannada linguist, and the author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy—to enrich the Kannada WikiSource. This team used Unicode, a standard of consistency for converting text (and code) into a new format.

Swamy was trying to access these poems, and was having trouble because it was in ISCII, an Indian character encoding standard. We began writing scripts to make the Vachanas (poems) searchable by an index. But, in order to do that well, we had to build a platform for everyone to use: the linguistic researchers, students, and the public at large who are interested in reaching this literature.

Omshivaprakash, a Kannada Wikimedian, worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements, and chose the open source software tools to use. I was involved in providing critical hacks for digitization and valuable inputs through suggestions, feedback, and quality assurance.

At present, our repository, Vachana Sanchaya, has around 200,000 unique words that were derived from these poems. The public has been using our repository and accessing Vahanas (poems) from our Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profiles. There are thousands of people now who read a Vahana as part of their daily routine. Vachana Sanchaya is not just meant for reading the poems, it is also meant for research. So, we have added a way for researchers to help us review the content and will be adding references from various research papers.


Above: A screenshot of the Vachana sahitya page

The most commonly searched words are:

ಕರ್ಮ(Karma: English: work/deed)
ಸತ್ಯ(SathyaEnglish: truthfulness )
ನದಿ(Nadī: English:river)

ಆಂಗೀರಸ, ಪುಲಸ್ತ್ಯ, ಪುಲಹ, ಶಾಂತ,
ದಕ್ಷ, ವಸಿಷ್ಠ, ವಾಮದೇವ, ನವಬ್ರಹ್ಮ, ಕೌಶಿಕ, ಶೌನಕ, ಸ್ವಯಂಭು, ಸ್ವಾರೋಚಿಷ, ಉತ್ತಮ, ತಾಮಸ, ರೈವತ,
ಚಾಕ್ಷಷ, ವೈವಸ್ವತ, ಸೂರ್ಯಸಾವರ್ಣಿ,ಚಂದ್ರಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಸಾವರ್ಣಿ,
ಇಂದ್ರ ಸಾವರ್ಣಿ ಇವರು ಇಪ್ಪತ್ತು ಮಂದಿ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ನಿರ್ಮಾಣ ಸಹಾಯ[ದ]ವರು. ಹತ್ತೊಂಬತ್ತು ಎಂದರೆ ಪುಣ್ಯನದಿಗಳು.
ಅದು ಎಂತೆಂದಡೆ: ಗ್ರಂಥ

We encourage other projects of this kind to follow our method and use any part of our process that is helpful.

Going foward, we would like to:

Initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researches help to tag words and grow the glossary
Continue work on subsequent, similar projects for Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya (work has begun) and Vyasa and Muddann (work not yet started)
Extend this platform to other the contemporary literature works available in the public domain.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/opensource-march-27-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-digitize-any-book-in-public-domain