Marathi word processors (fwd)

[Mittal Sushil]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 14:35:20 -0400
From: Champa_Bilwakesh at AVID.COM
To: Multiple recipients of list SASIALIT <SASIALIT at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Marathi word processors


[cut...]

Apple Computer Inc launches Indian language software

By Narayanan Madhavan

NEW DELHI, Feb 11 (Reuter) - Apple Computer Inc, eyeing a potential
market
of more than 200 million people, launched on Tuesday basic computer
software
in major Indian languages.

Apple officials unveiled in New Delhi the Indian Language Kit (ILK),
described as "the world's first operating system (OS)-level solution for
Indian language computing."

"It is a paradigm shift. It is the first of its kind in India," Apple
Computer India's managing director, R.K. Gupta, told a news conference
in
the Indian capital.

The operating system is the core standard around which software
applications
for users are developed.

The ILK could serve as the foundation to write software applications in
Indian languages and court a huge market that looks beyond
English-speaking
people of the 950-million-strong nation, Apple officials said.

Apple officials said there were at present no Indian language
equivalents
for Disk Operating System (DOS) and Windows, the systems software made
by
Microsoft Corp for Apple's arch-rival, International Business Machines
Corp
..

A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed to Reuters that DOS or Windows were
not
currently available in Hindi or any other Indian language.

Apple said its OS kit would support three Indian scripts, enabling users
to
work with Hindi, India's main language, and the Marathi, Sanskrit,
Nepali,
Punjabi and Gujarati languages.

India has 14 languages in which official communications are made. Apple
was
expected to develop basic software in other Indian languages within two
years, Gupta said.

Apple has developed similar OS software for Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic and
Cyrillic (Russian) scripts.

Apple's software requires compatible computer machines mostly made by
the
company itself, although it has now allowed the manufacture of clones,
which
IBM championed to pioneer a worldwide spread of personal computers.

The software could also help the launch of World Wide Web pages on the
Internet, they said.

An Apple spokesman said Hindi was the first language for 182 million
people,
Gujarati for 39 million and Gurmukhi (Punjabi script) for 20 million
people
residing in India alone.

Besides serving these people, ILK could cater to others who speak these
languages in countries like South Africa, Yemen and Britain, he said.

"This has been the dream of our industry," Dewang Mehta, executive
director
of the National Association for Software and Service Companies
(Nasscom),
told the news conference.

Mehta said India's federal government had asked state governments to use
one
percent of their budgets in 1997/98 (April-March) on information
technology.

The state governments mostly communicate in local languages unlike the
federal government, which mainly uses English. Indian language software
could help boost the number of personal computers, currently as low as
1.6
million, Mehta said.

He said an independent study had shown that the government of Uttar
Pradesh,
India's most populous state, would spend 35 billion rupees (about $1
billion) in 1997/98 on computers and peripherals if computing was
possible
in Hindi.

Indian users, notably publishers, currently use local language software
applications, but they are built with the help of intermediate tools
based
on English language operating systems, and lack flexibility, Apple
officials
said.