IndLinux Project: www.indlinux.org and www.sourceforge.net/projects/indlinux. A volunteer group working at the desktop level (KDE/GNOME), using Unicode. ISCII, the Indian standard character interface, also will be supported by providing converter tools. Current focus is on font development and translations for GNOME 2.0 and a complete Hindi version of Red Hat Linux, including the installer. A distributed approach encourages people to take up localization for their language. There are now volunteers from more remote areas such as Bhopal, Jabalpur and Nainital, as well as regular centres such as Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore.
IndiX: rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix. A modified X server to support Indian languages using OpenType fonts. Uses Unicode.
IndLinux at IIT Madras: www.tenet.res.in/Donlab/Indlinux. From the prestigious IIT Madras in the South Indian city of Chennai. They have modified X and the kernel's console to support Indian languages with ISCII encoding.
Linux Localization Initiative (LLI): lli.linux-bangalore.net. A volunteer group working on translating LDP documentation (starting with HOWTOs) to Indian languages.
The Indic-Computing Project: indic-computing.sourceforge.net. Aims to create a resource center for all Indian language issues in computing.
Language Technology Resource Centre (LTRC), IIIT Hyderabad: www.iiit.net/ltrc/index.html. Provides language dictionaries, a plugin for viewing ISCII and font converters. Also doing a machine-based translation tool (Anusaaraka). Most of their work is released under the GNU GPL.
Indix, IITM and IIIT-Hyderabad's work is supported by the government of India. The rest are volunteer-based and “looking for funds”.
J. Patricia Annie JebaMalar (pat@lantana.tenet.res.in) provides updates on some interesting GNU/Linux and other OS work happening in South India, in the Tamil language heartland and nearby: www.tamillinux.org.
There are two international projects to create a complete rendering engine: Pango (Pango.org, Li18nux.org) and Graphite (graphite.sil.org/index.htm). India could gain from these. They also have plans for complete sets of Unicode fonts (including not only the Unicode characters, but also all of the noncharacter glyphs for rendering Indic scripts).
