All posts by Veeven

Telugu Wikipedia Marathon in Hyderabad

This Sunday (July 10th, 2011), there will a TeWiki Marathon in Hyderabad. This wikithon is intended to—

  • improve of the quality of articles by reviewing the machine-translated articles and extending online articles
  • help newbies with editing and formatting

For more details, see TeWiki Marathon page in Telugu Wikipedia.
Continue reading Telugu Wikipedia Marathon in Hyderabad

Preferred Keyboard Layout for Telugu: InScript

I get many hits to this blog in the form searches about Telugu keyboard layout. It seems that my earlier posts offering a way to type Unicode Telugu using apple and modular keyboard layouts are attracting many hits. I just want to note here that those two layouts are intended only for people who already knew those layouts (on Anu Script Manager or other proprietary and traditional Telugu typing systems) and do not want to learn a new layout when they want to type in Unicode.

If you are new to Telugu typing and want to learn a keyboard layout, you should learn InScript layout. InScript layout is standardized by Government of India for all Indic scripts. Windows XP, Vista, 7 operating systems already come with this keyboard layout. You just need to enable it. InScript layout is also available in Linux and Macintosh operating systems.

Here are the normal and shifted snapshots of Telugu InScript keyboard layout.

Normal:
Telugu InScript keyboard layout

When Shift key is used:
Telugu InScript keyboard layout (Shifted)
Continue reading Preferred Keyboard Layout for Telugu: InScript

Google Translate now supports to-and-from Telugu

Google Translate now supports Telugu (official blog post). And, this service is still in experimental alpha stage. It is working reasonably well for simple and commonly known sentences and phrases. A lot more to be improved for the complex sentences.

Here is a screen shot showing the English to Telugu Translation of this post:

A screen shot showing Google Translate English to Telugu

Continue reading Google Translate now supports to-and-from Telugu

Upcoming conferences

Two upcoming conferences that have something for Telugu, Unicode, Localization:

35th Internationalization & Unicode Conference is happening in Santa Clara, CA, USA on the days of October 17 – 19, 2011. It has interesting tutorials and presentations on topics like internationalization, localization issues, multilingual fonts, etc. You can see more details on the program details page.

2nd World Telugu Writers Conference is happening in Vijayawada, India on the days of August 13 – 15, 2011. Krishna District Telugu Writers Association is conducting this conference. Please see the invite and more details.

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Kinige.com, an online Telugu e-book store

Kinige.com is an online e-book store for Telugu books. You can buy Telugu books as e-books or you can just rent them for a month.

Kinige currently has 126 2,000 Telugu books and that number is growing steadily. Some of the popular writers are already on Kinige: Tanikella Bharani, Madhubabu, Malladi Venkata Krishna Murthy, Kasturi Murali Krishna, Chandra Latha and Vinnakota Ravisankar to name a few. You can also find compilations of Telugu stories by Katha Sahiti. And, if you are a writer, you can self-publish your books on Kinige. Continue reading Kinige.com, an online Telugu e-book store

Symposium on Telugu Computing — April 16, Hyderabad

SiliconAndhra (a Telugu literary and cultural organization), in association with Government of Andhra Pradesh, is organizing a one-day symposium in Hyderabad about Telugu computing. This is a brainstorming session to assess and take stock of the current state of affairs in the use of Telugu in Internet and Information Technology.

There are many people and organizations are working in the areas of Telugu computing. It will be helpful to get all the interested parties together and talk about the current status and discuss future direction and find opportunities for collaboration.

Here are the details about the event:

  • Date & Time: Saturday, April 16, 2011 – 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
  • Place: Dr. Marri Chenna Reddy Huaman Resource Development Institute (MCRHRD), Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad.

Continue reading Symposium on Telugu Computing — April 16, Hyderabad

Viewing Telugu in mobiles and smartphones

Update (Jan 1 & Mar 13, 2014): Latest models of smart phones come with built-in support for Telugu. Here is a summary:

  • Android: Android has gained support for Telugu since 4.2 (Jelly Bean), which became available from about end of the year 2012. (Seach for Telugu in this page.) That means all new Android phones (from whatever company) with versions 4.2 and above should render Telugu correctly.
  • iPhone, iPad: Any phone/pad with iOS 4 or newer versions should support Telugu.
  • Windows Phone: Any phone with Windows 8 or newer versions should support Telugu.
  • Firefox OS: Any phone with Firefox OS 1.3 or above versions will support Telugu.

If your phone has the latest OS as said above and is not showing Telugu characters (say when you visit a Telugu website), it could be because the phone company stripped multilingual support. Contact your phone company.

You might want to look for apps for typing Telugu.

The below is earlier version of this post for reference purposes.

Continue reading Viewing Telugu in mobiles and smartphones