Below are the 9 most recent journal entries recorded in sivaram_n's LiveJournal:

Friday, August 27th, 2004
5:49 pm	Footnotes & Emacs I just discovered footnotes.el or rather it's part of the standard distribution. That makes me one happy hombre! So what is this footnotes.el? It makes you do things like this[1] or this[2]. Now that I've informed you of the geeky, nerdy way of making your plain text notes and emails a little scholarly like, I'll leave before the emacs evangelism starts kicking in! But Truth be told, footnotes is a damn neat and cool thingy. But isn't everything about Emacs cool? Footnotes: [1] Refer to a footnote [2] Another footnote (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, August 13th, 2004
2:47 pm	IT in India I just learned that it costs about Rs 25K to develop an Indic font. I mean, that is the barest minimum that has to be collected to hire a developer to design an Indic font; namely Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada etc.  This was in the course of enquiring for fonts from a LaTeX usage perspective. I'm not too sure whether the fonts developed can be used with other editors (think OpenOffice) but it would help if they did. That set me wondering whether IT would make sense in India given our unique cultural traits. For an alternative to be provided and to be used(Linux/*BSD et al), the infrastructure has to be provided.  With a diverse population speaking at least 14?  major languages, whatever IT solutions deployed has to fundamentally address the language issue.  Look, in a country of 1  billion+ people, speaking many different tongues with varying levels of economic strength, English is not the answer.  Here's why. The government defines literacy as the ability of a person to get to do a few things in their native language.  By any measure, that "literacy" is not sufficient for any economic activity in the computing sense of using IT.  Why set the bar any higher by forcing someone to learn English to participate in the IT "revolution"?  Any  IT solution should address things in the Indian context.  At last  count, there are 300 million poor people as defined by the government; ignoring them is neither wise nor good Karma! OK, lets assume we've got over the initial hump of poverty, malnutrition, basic education and the masses are suitable for IT indoctrination. :) It therefore leads initially to the development of fonts, font support in various tools and finally the translation of everyday computer activity description to the respective language equivalents. Addressing each, one by one... a. The availability of fonts dictate native language support.  On a broader social context, the usage of English tends to decimate native language usage (this is NOT a rant against English usage, just the observation that there is a marked decline of native language usage in general where English is present).  Fonts in native languages address the first rung of support to enable a vibrant native community of users to participate.  The more the quality and quantity of fonts, the higher the odds of getting people involved.  I suspect (& this is just a hunch), for people not really comfortable with English, the initial interaction with computers is more hieroglyphic than an actual understanding of what the English word on the menus means.  Again, this is not a rant against the ignorance/smartness level of the end user but to point out that the uptake can be made higher AND faster if things are done in their native tongue. b.  The fonts by themselves would not magically enable anything of significance.  They would have to be ubiquitously present in everyday pieces of software like editors/ tools/ spreadsheets to be able to make the connection to the user; that it's a normal thing to find software in his/her native language.  In fact, this would be enormous and tedious task and has to be mandated as a standard from the government.  Keyboard language layouts, mandatory support for 'x' number of languages for any government purchases, standards will have to be defined to enable seamless native language support.  Given the volume of software/hardware shipments at present in our country, it's highly unlikely that there will be commercial support for any software package from any vendor.  That leaves only the academic, government and FSF organisations to do the legwork.  This is a lot of work, people. c.  The availability of fonts and the methods of the keying them in should spur translations of various popular tools and utilities.  Once there are user manuals and tutorials in native languages, it's a safe bet that the IT connection can be made more meaningful.  The fonts, the standards, the keyboard layouts are just the plumbing that have to work seamlessly.  And just like plumbing, when it doesn't work, the turn-off factor will be detrimental to the spread of Indic-centric software. From what I've read on the 'Net, current efforts are fragmented (IndLinux, Bangla, Gujarati Linux) and does not meaningfully address the scale and magnitude of problem. This is not to say what they're doing is useless. In the absence of any direction or framework, any activity to ameliorate the situation is welcome.  Any language in India has a few million speakers give or take a couple of millions ( er..with 1 billion, one does have the luxury of inaccuracy in the millions).  If IT is to meaningfully address their needs, the first step is to make it easier for them to participate.  Logic dictates that we approach things from what the user wants and NOT what we think they'd want. Namely, Linux or FSF alternatives worked  elsewhere, so it should in India.  That is just part of the answer, the deeper question is, how & what do they want to do with it?  "Swatantryam" is great but with freedom comes the responsibility to Do The Right Thing the first time in a land of scarce funds. While it may appear that this article is appealing to nationalist feeling, it bears some thought that in the rush to evangelise the heathens, one does not forget the end objective, that IT is for the common good of all people.  While we've been smart enough to recognise an opportunity when we see it, it behooves us to check our assumptions once in awhile.  In the final analysis, it will require the tact of Chanakya and the wisdom of Solomon to meaningfully deliver any or some benefits to a nation which is a living Tower of Babel! -- Yes, I'm aware of the irony of this article being in English. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 10th, 2004
3:38 pm	Poetry running around in my head This has been spinning in my head for sometime now and now I got it.  Well part of it, google helped me out with the rest               Home is the sailor, home from the sea,              And the hunter home from the hill The thing is, I recollect reading this first in a book, a novel but I can't, for the life of me, remember the title.  I'm certain it's an Agatha Christie novel but I'm not sure. FYI, the poem is by R L Stevenson. (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 7th, 2004
2:18 pm	MUAs and email standards I sometimes wonder; under what level of intoxication did I pick up gnus as my mail client? A MUA with more commands than you can possibly remember but with enough functionality to do all the things you wished your mail client had. It's not that I'm regretting learning to use Gnus but the fact is, it's so far removed from the ordinary mail clients that the general populace uses, that it arouses a certain morbid curiosity from them. If I remember correctly, I did struggle to learn to use Gnus though in fairness I never did start out by RTFM. So the pain. Once it got into me, it was pretty much a question of adjusting to the terminology of Gnus. What angers me, is the insistence that the other MUAs can be incredibly bad and claim a right to mess up what is essentially an exchange of plain text messages. Especially LookOut(TM) and it's ilk. Look, I don't grok RFC822 but I sure know a shredded email from a proper plain text email. I think the Gnus team got it right when they named the function 'deuglify-' to handle mails from the above grotesque clients. Things have gotten so out of hand that I once got chewed out for *not* top-posting. You can no longer do the right thing! So, in the final analysis, I use a mail client which respects standards and is generally in compliance with them and it gets me into trouble. And so my cup of email woes overflows... *sniff* (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 5th, 2004
3:07 pm	Emacs evangelism Sometimes, you do allow yourself to pity the tele-evangelist. Here I am, trying to convince people to use Emacs and you know how hard it is? I have little to show for my efforts in trying to convince the pagans of the virtues of Emacs. Hmmm... may be I should *NOT* use the evangelical mode at all? :-) I guess, fire and brimstone and the sins of not using the One True Editor are not much of a threat to their computing lifestyle. Though I've not used Xemacs a lot(installed it, saw too many buttons and too much mouse use;gave up), there is a better reception to it than the true GNU Emacs. At least, people are willing to give it a spin before giving up. It's like, the more eye candy it has, the better the uptake, utility value be damned! Reactions have ranged from utter disbelief, to puzzlement as to why I'm going ga-ga over an editor. An editor, dammit! The problem I believe is one of need. Most are willing to slave over the given tool even if it's highly unsuitable for the task. Why? Because it's the one they're told to use. I've discovered(no s**t,Sherlock) it's quite impossible to get their attention onto the merits of Emacs. Is it because they've suddenly found to their embarrassment, that they've been doing things the hard way? Some are willing to concede that what they're doing is not most efficient or productive way but lack the nerve to switch. Some have taken it for a spin; given up after a few months. So in the grand scheme of things, I think I managed to convince 1 person to use Emacs; which he does and even got him so far as Gnus MUA! Evangelism has been a failure for me! As for the others, all they know is that there is 1 chap whom they *won't* come to, when the topic is editors! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 4th, 2004
3:44 pm	back after an absence different place, different account. In the UK. Suffice to say, a decent break from the commute for sometime. Been here since April. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 2nd, 2004
10:01 am	traffic! I sometimes wonder,how bangalore makes it everyday with the number of accidents that are happening. I mean, you read about 10 accidents a day(which of & by itself is high) but considering 1.7 million vehicles (17 lakhs), i daresay the numbers are on the low side. It's a wonder that there is not some carnage on the road everyday. maddening and frustratinglyslow, made worse by inefficient traffic cops, you have chaos every day. little surprise there's very little humour in office. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 2nd, 2004
10:01 am	Suddenly deciding to have cold showers is not a good idea, especially really early in the morning. Got a pounding headache partly mitigated by Tea. Preparing for DW training is off to an OK start. Good thing there aren't many people on the bay today, can get to study in peace. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 1st, 2004
9:22 am	First spin of Knoppix Live CD Tried Knoppix on a IBM thinkpad, worked like a charm. Sound didn't work but everything was sweet. Got to tinker with it a little more & then copy my friends on this. Current Mood: calm (Comment on this)