Devanagari OCR Resources:

"The ILT truthing tool, designed at CEDAR, enables users to easily create and edit Devanagari image document truth. The system allows the user to open gray scale document images of the following formats - tiff, gif, jpeg.

After binarizing the image, Text and image zone separation is carried out and word boundaries are displayed.The user can then enter the truth for the words by using the transliterated (English) text or the graphical keyboard. Truth files can also be opened and updated, enabling users to resume truthing at a later stage.
The tool and the document truth set is available for download here. "

Languages in India - Census Data:

"In the Census of India, 1991 as in earlier censuses, a question was asked on the mother tongue of the individual. Mother tongue was defined as 'the language spoken in childhood by the person's mother to the person. If the mother died in infancy, the language mainly spoken in the person's home in childhood will be the mother tongue. In the case of infants and deaf mutes the language usually spoken by the mother should be recorded. In case of doubt, the language mainly spoken in the household may be recorded'. "

CMU's 'Million Books' on the Web project makes slow, steady progress:

"An international effort spearheaded by Raj Reddy and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, its goal is to make a million books available free-to-read on the Web by 2007.
..
"After a year and a half of scanning, the project still seems to be far from its goal of a million books, Reddy acknowledged, but the pace is picking up. It took about nine months to complete just the first 1,000 books. By the end of this year, 100,000 books will be digitized and the one-millionth book could be added within two years, he added.

"But scanning represents only about 10 percent of the work. Most of the effort is spent on finding, selecting and shipping the books, not to mention reviewing and cataloguing the digitized versions. The texts are in a wide variety of languages, including Sanskrit, Urdu, Arabic, French and Hindi."

The Million Book Project: www.archive.org/texts/collection.php?collection=millionbooks

"EuroEnglish":

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish"
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". This will certainly make the sivil sevants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by the "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraceful, and they should go away.

By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evri vun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
...

Transliteration Pages:

"Thinking aloud about transliteration - especially for Indic scripts. Some of the material is tentative. A new International Standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts has been developed under the ISO [International Organization for Standardization]."

Dewan Bahasa itself Sanskrit:

Dr J Wong Chai Choo
2:38pm Mon Apr 26th, 2004

I refer to the letter on Let's ban Sanskrit words, too. I think Verghis's point is clear that we Malaysians look inordinately confused, silly, and in active denial.

Today, modern scholars are increasingly looking at Sanskrit with awe and respect. Not just for the spiritual scope and depth of ancient India but also for its far reach into East Asia shaping cultures and philosophy in China, Japan, and South East Asia.

It also being suggested by American scholars that Sanskrit is the closest language to numerical analysis because of non-arbitrariness (of tight name and form coupling or nama and rupa) which is the basis of modern computer languages (maybe this partially explains Indian IT prowess).

I would add more Sanskrit originated words to Verghis's eminent list:

They are bahasa, pustaka, sastra, Malay, bumiputra, raja, mentri, perdana, ishwara, waja, satria, wira, surya, upacara, agama, puasa, shurga, neraka, sutra, sri, maha, wisma, ashrama, samskara, utara, barat, Singapura, Kalimantan, Bali, putri, bahkti, mahameru, budi, upaya, angkasa, purnima, kedai, Kedah, rasa, manas, manusya, raksasa, saksi, Sumatra, nama, rupa, sempurna, hari, waktu, kali, dunia, dewa, dewi, and much, much more!

Now, if we removed these at worst, or failed to acknowledge them on the part of the esteemed Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (itself already Sanskrit in name) wouldn't we look rather silly?

Even Singapore hosted a Suvarnabumi festival this month to celebrate the ancient history and richness of the Malay archipelago.

It's a shame that Sanskrit and English are not recognised in Malaysia along with the powerful idea of a Bahasa Malaysia that is indeed truly enriched with the best of the ancient and modern, plus our own unique Malaysian identity.

It’s an asset of our multicultural nation that we certainly shouldn't want to shoot ourselves in both feet for!