Until now computing in Tamil was not an easy task for those typing in MS Word. But a new software for auto correction and spell check while typing has brought respite for the users now. The SRM University in collaboration with NDS LingSoft Solutions, Chennai, had brought out first-of-its kind software named ‘MenTamizh’, which was launched here on Thursday.
“Like in English, there is no facility of auto correction and spell check while typing in MS-Word as the language has rich morphology. Earlier, many opined that English alone can be the suitable language for computing. But today it has been proved that around 7,000 languages in the world are suitable for computing” said N Deivasundaram, Managing Director, NDS LingSoft Solutions.
The software ‘MenTamizh’, a word processing software, was launched by the Tamil Academy of SRM University headed by M Ponnavaikko.
During the demonstration of the software, Deivasundaram said, “This word-processor has the facilities such as auto correction, spell check, sandhi (a grammatical rule) check, language convertor, dictionaries, thesaurus, alphabetical order checker, indexing facility, alpha and numeral convertor, PDF saving option and bibliographic style options. This is the first word-processor which has all the facilities. We have spent around Rs 40 lakhs and done research for more than 10 years to bring out such a software”.
In his address M Ponnavaikko, Vice Chancellor of SRM University said, “Before the invention of Tamil fonts people used ASCII tables. Then in 1988 using the English keyboard, people were able to type Tamil words. A Tamil Internet Conference in the year 1997 lead the path to create Tamil keyboard. In 1998 the then Tamil Nadu government appointed a standardisation committee to create a full-fledged Tamil wordprocessor, which was headed by Prof Anandhakrishnan. Again a Tamil Internet Conference held in the year 1999 opened the door to start a new university called ‘Tamil Virtual University’. In all these historical journeys, creating a Tamil wordprocessor had been the focus”.
Interestingly, late writer Sujatha, who was in the committee, initiated the idea of developing an advanced wordprocessor. It has to be noted that the first Tamil word-processor was called ‘Bharathi’ found in the early eighties but was used only in DOS computers, commonly used in Malaysia and Singapore. Then came Venus an updated wordprocessor, which can be used in Windows. Today there are a handful of wordprocessors available, but none have the facilities of ‘MenTamizh’.
In his address, P R Nakkeeran, Director, Tamil Virtual Academy, said, “Every university must research in various dimensions of Tamil computing. In our academy we have a research lab, which contains all the Tamil computing softwares developed till date. Anybody who are interested to develop a new software relating to Tamil computing can use our lab”.
The wordprocessor was launched by T S Sridhar IAS, Additional Chief Secretary, Higher Education, Tamil Nadu.
Comments
0 comment