Google’s TV Raman is one eye-opener of a personality. Dr. Raman cannot see, and his occasional blog posts about features of web accessibility for the visually impaired are really useful and interesting, also for the rest of us. In his latest post on the offical Google blog, Dr. Raman tells us about how his OCRopus when teamed together with Emacspeak can help blind people read - no, not Braille, but normally written text.
Dr. Raman says
As someone who cannot see, I prefer to live in a mostly paperless world. This means ruthlessly turning every piece of paper that enters my life into a set of bits that I can process digitally. I scan in everything.
Having depended thus far on commercially available OCR software, T.V. Raman has now lauched his own open source OCR initiative, OCRopus, that turns scanned matter into html text. It has support for Emacspeak, another of Raman’s pet projects, that turns digital web text into speech.
In his last post on the Google blog, Dr. Raman told us about how he used Google search as a spell check tool for names of people and places.
According to his resume on his website, Dr. TV Raman holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University, having done his BA in Mathematics from Pune University, MSc from IIT Bombay and MS from Cornell. Subsequently, he has worked for Adobe, IBM among other companies, and currently works for Google. I salute you, Dr. Raman.
I like the quote on his website
On the Internet, no one knows you aren’t a dog! Nor even if you are still the same dog!
I hope this blog post reaches Dr. Raman through a pingback on his post, which doesn’t allow comments. Dr. Raman, is anything being done at Google about accessibility of web pages in other languages, particularly ones that use other scripts? I work in Hindi on the web, and am really curious as to when we will be able to see some progress in that language.
Google has added some masala to Adsense support for their Indian publishers, or so they say. They have a team based in Hyderabad, and are “looking to improve the AdSense experience for Indian publishers”. From the picture on this post on Google Adsense blog, all but one of the seven team members look Indian.
Googlers Anupama Dutta and Nitin Arora have a Eureka moment at the Google blog. They announce that “Now you can blog in Hindi“. As if you couldn’t do this before. Blogspot’s new Hindi transliteration feature is commendable, but all it does is add another tool to a whole lot of existing Hindi typing tools on the internet. Blogging in Hindi has been alive and running for over three years now, and more than 500 blogs exist in Hindi as of today. All that anyone needs to blog in Hindi is a tool to type Hindi, and use that tool with Blogspot, Livejournal, Wordpress, Typepad or any other blogging tool. Any blogging tool that allows you to blog in English allows you to blog in Hindi, or for that matter in any other language that Unicode supports. I have been blogging in Hindi since December 2004.
Windows-XP/2000 and later come with input method editors for Hindi, and it is not rocket science to activate them. These allow you to write Hindi directly in Blogger’s edit box or Gmail’s, or in Wordpad or MS-Excel. So do a few other tools - like Baraha. But if you don’t want to activate them, there are a number of online or offline tools where you can type and copy-paste to the edit box. These include Uninagari, created by yours truly.
Since I use Windows Hindi IME, I can switch between Hindi and English with a mouse-click or a keypress, so Blogspot’s new feature is redundant for me, and for a whole lot of existing Hindi bloggers who have already found their tools to write Hindi. But if this feature wins Hindi blogging community some new converts, it has done some job. So, thanks Google. Also for bringing some more attention to Hindi blogging. Please make your headlines more in sync with the news in future. Your announcement has pissed off a few old-timers in Hindi blogging. Another thing to note: this new feature has enabled Devanagari script on Blogger, not just Hindi. Devanagari script is used to write not only Hindi but a dozen other languages. A more appropriate title for your post would have been “Devanagari blogging made easier on Blogger”.
I must admit it - Google’s two April fools jokes may be lame, but they got me - both Google TiSP (BETA) and Gmail Paper.
TiSP (BETA) was simply too good to be true, and still I fell for it. It claimed that TiSP (BETA) was a free broadband service working “by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines”. If I “signed up” they would send me the installation kit free and after a lot of dirtying my hands connecting it to my commode, I would have free wireless broadband internet. I clicked the “get started” link and got to the install page, which got me nowhere, except the FAQ page. The FAQ page had links to the custom install page and list of (water) companies that support TiSP, and they all 
ended up at the not found page. They even set up a support group, which already has over a thousand messages. And a blog post to boot, to announce the service.
In the meantime, my wife was swooning over the new free photo-printing service from Gmail. It said it could print our emails and mail them to us, supported by advertising, and also..
Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed.
Why wouldn’t they print MP3 and WAV files I wonder?
Click here to go straight to the typewriter: Uninagari
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This post will act as FAQ and support forum for Uninagari - an online Indian language Unicode typewriter, that has existed on this site for a couple of years, and has now expanded to include more keyboard options and more languages. At this time, it supports Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Nepali, Maithili, Konkani, Dogri, Sindhi, Kashmiri, etc.), Gurumukhi (Panjabi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, etc.) and Nastaliq (Urdu). Very soon, I will add some more Indian languages. If you use Uninagari and have a question, please go through the following FAQ, and if your question is not covered, leave a comment at the end of this post.
1. What is Uninagari?
It is a simple, no-frills typewriter that enables you to type in some Indian languages, using Unicode fonts. You can type your words, sentences, paragraphs in the text box provided and can copy it (Ctrl+C) and paste it (Ctrl+V) to your document (word-processor, email, presentation software, graphics software, whatever) as long as it supports Unicode. Uninagari is a simple text editor and will not allow any text formatting (bold, italic, font size change). You can apply all formatting in the destination document.
2. How are the keyboard layouts arranged?
The keyboard layouts either follow an established standard keyboard, or are semi-phonetic. By semi-phonetic, I mean that as far as possible, characters are assigned to their nearest phonetic equivalent in Roman script. Second preference has been given to tha shape of the character. Look at the keyboard graphic for details.
3. I am already used to a typewriter layout. What is there for me?
Devanagari typewriter has the option of three more keyboard layouts - Inscript, Remington and Shusha. Even if you are a beginner typing devanagari and will be typing more in future, I recommend getting used to Inscript layout. It is great for touch-typing. Uninagari editors for languages other than Hindi support only one keyboard layout.
4. Why should I use Uninagari, when my operating system has IME (Input Method Editors), and other editors are available?
When you have access to other editors, obviously you don’t need to use Uninagari. Uninagari has been found to be most useful when you are working on a computer not your own, where you don’t have permission or time to install anything. It is also a great tool for beginners in Indian language typing. My recommendation is to graduate to IME as soon as possible. To set up Indic IME on your read this article.
5. I want to use Uninagari offline/download it for my personal use.
This tool basically fills the need for online typing. There are other better tools for offline typing. However, I will make Uninagari available for download very soon.
6. How do I type half characters and conjunct characters (devanagari)?
Half characters and conjunct characters are not assigned to separate keys in Uninagari. Add a halant (\ key in default layout) to create a half character, e.g. क+्+य+ा=क्या. Similarly ज्ञ can be obtained by typig ज+्+ञ.
More questions? Ask!