TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2002 ]

NEW DELHI: Want to write your next e-mail in Malayalam? Or maybe Bengali? You may not have to wait anymore for your e-mail provider to offer that facility.

Instead, you could just buy - and install on your own PC - software that will allow you to send e-mail in any Indian language of your choice. Well, almost any.

Crucially, you'll be able to write and read e-mail in your mother- tongue whether you use a desktop mail client like Microsoft Outlook, Netscpae Messenger, or Eudora - or whether you use a Web-based mail service.

The Indian government-controlled Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, aka C-DAC, has unveiled Leap Mail, the Indian language e- mail software product that will achieve this feat.

Of course, the facility to send and receive e-mail in Indian languages is already available to users of Web-based e-mail services such as those of Indiatimes Mail. But this is the first time that users will not be dependent on their service provider.

The technology has been developed by C-DAC's GIST (Graphics and Intelligence-based Script Technology) group.Leap Mail users will not have to send their messages as text attachments as was the case with C-DAC’s earlier offering iLEAP, whereby a user could create an attachment using this Indian language word processor and send it as an attachment.

Leap Mail will be sold through C-DAC’s 40 channel partners at Rs 5,000 per licence. The package will include the CD, a manual and keyboard stickers in 11 Indian languages. According to C-DAC executive director R.K. Arora, Leap Mail is being targeted at corporates, government departments and cyber cafes.

LEAP Mail supports all the 10 major Indian language scripts, besides English. These are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. It also has a multi-lingual editor using which one can combine English and Indian language text within the same mail.

“We have made the installation process very simple. Since Indian languages are highly phonetic, we have provided an onscreen keyboard and typing assistance for all languages. Beginners can write messages by clicking on the characters displayed on the onscreen keyboard. Users can also employ the English keyboard to write messages in Indian languages, but by typing the words as they are spoken using English characters," says Arora.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=12678188