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FUTURE TRENDS

  1. Development at Utkal University, Bhubaneshwar, Orissa under the leadership of Mrs. Mohanti have included OCR for several Indian Languages, text to speech based on powerful logic of Sanskrit shastra and similar technologies. We are hoping that those resources will be turned over into public domain so that the people of this country can own and enjoy the same
  2. Text to speech by Lucknow based organization led by Mr. Vinamra Agarwal has accomplished very realisitic conversion of text to speech for the Indian language.
  3. OpenOffice has been converted into Hindi and CDAC Banglore and Sun Microsystems are expected to release it anytime.
  4. CDAC Pune have made substantial progress in Indian language OCRs and are expected to launch the same soon. We hope that this time, this 'soon' is really soon.
  5. gnubhaarati is our incoming intiative to make a version of FreeDuc have several Indian languages in addition to several other Western languages.
  6. With our competence in Indian language technology we can develop, support and create the neccesary environment in south asian and eastern languages.
  7. With the emergence of free software and low cost hardware in Indian languages we are confident that we will have massive user base of the software technologies so that several International agencies will have to reckon with us. This may end the indifference shown often towards our cultural needs as is seen in several past versions of Unicode (We only wish we were wrong).
  8. With the advent of QT (expexted in september 2003), it is expected that a major burst of activities on KDE platform in Indian languages will erupt. It is good news that QT is now free software in so far as it is used for non-commercial purposes. It will be a god sent for us since there are many attractive programs that are waiting to be localized.
  9. With the release of the linux kernel 2.6, it is expected that many of the current problems of the hardware compatibility will be substantially reduced paving the way for faster and wider penetration of free software.
  10. Government agencies like IT ministries of state and central government have become significantly more vocal in their support for their free software. This is going to make a big difference.
  11. State government of Kerela are reporetd to have included free software based curriculum in the schools (we only wish that more state governments make atleast a provision that curriculum in schools and colleges should'nt specify any proprietary software and thus permit either the enthusiasts or the fund-starved managements to try free software without diluting the purpose of curriculum.)
  12. With the progress of connectivity spreading either through fibre optics or wireless (CDMA),a major quantitaive growth is expected in data communication across the country. It is not very intelligent to say that much of this communication will be in Indian languages.