25 March, 2008

UN Works Programme on endangered languages

There has been a huge debate about Unesco's report on disappearence of Punjabi language in next 50 years. I have been searching unsuccessfully on google to find original Unesco report to confirm this. What I have found so far is a link to endangered languages in India that mentions Sharda lipi (Kasmiri) as endangered.
Punjabi is not mentioned on this page as endangered, but I could not get hold of Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing which seems to include list of all endangered languages. Unesco site states that a new version will be out in 2008, I am looking forward to read it.

I heared some people commenting that Unesco has not authority on saying that Punjabi is endangered. Unesco has acutually deviced a framework to access language vitality and endangerment. Unesco programme includes all languages and an interesting but worrying fact is that one language disappeares every two weeks. Give the current attitude of native punjabi people toward punjabi it seems to be a real possibility in next 5 to 10 years. Most british born punjabis can speak punjabi, but can not read or write it. I will assume similar situation in Canada and US.

Its time to act. Now.

18 March, 2008

when Fedora has better KDE4 face than opensuse

from last 3 months, I am using opensuse for KDE4,
while I install fedora (rawhide), it seems only KDE4
package, although it somehow difficult to use it,
but it is full of applications. While opensuse 10.3
still have both (which is better in some options).

fedora got fast latest package and no different repo
for it. It is quite easy as compared to opensuse
(where I have to find 3 different repo and
once system broke for KDE4)

let us see Fedora 9 and OpenSUSE 11 release, what
they are going to serve.....

03 March, 2008

how to get credit for Public domain work?

After getting a call from Gurdwara Sahib, I was wonder
how can I make Old Historical Document available to
Public, when people recognize my work, which actually
I did for computerization of those. Surely if
somebody else can copy and make available under
his name (even in public domain), then it will hurt
a lot and I would no longer like to work on those!!!

what is solution? any license?
it seems no, as 60 years old Books, documents automatically
came under Public domain.

What I propose to them it like, we should make
public advt as soon as we public on Internet.
All Punjabi Newspaper, Electrician Media,
we should make those available Details, what we
did, what is effect, who we are, so that
if people find any other copy from somebody else,
they should know "oh, this, this is done by Those
people (us)".

This is only way I found effective.
All Punjabi communist literature is already in
Public Domain, People know it is and who did this.
So Credit for doing such work was not going to waste at all.