22-24 July 2000
Singapore
Tamilnet conferences are annual forums for all those
interested in "Tamil Information Processing and
Resources on the Internet". The first one in
this series, Tamilnet97 organized by National Univ.
of Singapore was held in Singapore during 17-18 May
1997. The second one, Taminet99, organized by IT Task
Force of the Tamilnadu Govt, was held in Chennai
during 7-8 Feb. 1999.
Tamil Inaiyam 2000, the Third International
Conference on Tamil Internet (which was to be held in
Colombo on March 13th and 14th) is now scheduled to
be held in Singapore from 22 to 24 JULY 2000. The
website http://www.tamilinaiyam2000.org
will serve as the official website for the
conference. Please visit this website regularly to
learn more details on the conference, online
registration etc.
The conference is being organized by the Tamil Internet
Steering Committee (TISC) of Singapore (with Mr.
R. Ravindran, Member of Parliament, Singapore and Mr.
Arun Mahizhnan, Dy. Director, Inst. of Policy
Studies, Singapore as Co-Chairs) in close
collaboration with the IT Task Force of Tamilnadu
Govt (with Prof. M. Anandakrishnan as the Head) and
Official Languages Commission of Sri Lanka
(Dr.Sivathasan, Director). I have agreed to the
request of these folks to serve as a Co-Chair (with
Dr. Desai Narasimhalu ofSingapore) for the Technical
Programme Sub-committee.
Following is a short line of various topics that
will be taken up for discussion and further action at
this TI2000 conference.
Area I - Language &
Education
- A standard reference source for
computer-related terms (a Glossary) in Tamil
for use in softwares and on Internet
- Online Dictionaries /Lexicon/Thesauras ?
- Computer-aided Teaching of Tamil in
classrooms & online ( materials, tools,
databases, delivery mode)
- Tamil Virtual University & A network of
online and virtual campuses for Tamil across
the globe
- Digital Archives of Tamil Literary works,
doctoral dissertations, ... (data storage
formats, international catalog, copyright
issues, collaboration amongst existing and
planned initiatives)
Area II: Technology (Tamil
usage at Personal level and on Internet)
- Multimedia Tools: OCR, voice recognition,
speech synthesis, natural language
processing,....
- Tamil Search Engines
- Interface tools/APIs for information flow
across platforms and across different
encodings
- Information processing and exchange on mobile
computer platforms
- Java based tools for online Spell checker,
dictionary,...
- (interactive usage of Tamil online/on
Internet)
- Softwares for automated translation of Tamil
texts to other languages and vice versa
Area III: Technical
Standards and Agreements
- Character and Glyph encoding standards
(>50 -> 2 or 3 -> Unicode ?)
- Unicode Tamil Segment - pros and cons for
possible revision
- A Standard for Transliterated (&
transcription mode) of romanized Tamil
- Tamil Script refrom (ukara & Ukara
varisai)
- Transcription of foreign sounds in Tamil
script (incl. alternates to granthas) --
Domain Name registration in Tamil
Area IV: Ecommerce
- Information processing of larger Databases in
Tamil (include Interface tools/APIs for input
querries and output in different encodings
(& languages?)
- dedicated software for Tamil businesses
(billing, finance management, warehousing,
dispatch, order tracking,..)
- industry trends
Area V: Organization
- National and regional Steering Groups devoted
to Tamil Computing
- Launch of An International Forum for Info.
Technology in Tamil (INFITT)
- Tamilnet conferences - suggestions on
content, calender, venue, ....
A strong appeal is being made here to all those
interested in the above topics to participate at the
forthcoming TI2000 conference. It will be an
excellent opportunity for direct input in the form of
paper or poster presentations, participations in the
technical discussions and learn (& have hands on
Demos) on the growing number of softwares for Tamil
computing etc.
In view of the changed venue and the date, the DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF
CONTRIBUTIONS (paper presentations orally and/or
posters) IS BEING EXTENDED TO 15 May 2000.
Those interested may choose a "topic"
and present their views on the current status and
offer suggestions for further course of action
relating to the chosen topic. You can send in your
intentions (with details) to participate in the
Technical discussions to me via email kalyan@softhome.net
(in case of problems to kalyan@dcsun1.epfl.ch)
from now on with a copy to arun_mahizhnan@ips.org.sg
and ananda@eth.net.
Details on the list of speakers at various sessions
and on poster presentations will be announced in the
second half of May 2000.
Please distribute the above information widely
and post to Tamil mailing lists that you subscribe
to.
K.
Kalyanasundaram Lausanne,
Switzerland
![[STC/mintharam]](stclogo.gif)
