Friday Talk - 3

Mysore University Library and Information Science Student Association(MULISSA) organised a lecture on "Kannada in Computers" by Dr.Panditaradhya, a well-known speaker in this region. It was held atthe Department of Library and Information Science, University ofMysore, Mysore on 7th November 2007. The lecture was the third one inthe series of "Friday talks" for the current year. Because of thefestive week, the lecture was advanced to Wednesday itself.

In his speech, Dr. Panditaradhya said that a language is basicallylearnt orally. The oral communication has been dominating the writtencommunication for centuries. The invention of printing press byGutenberg has enhanced the impact of written communication over thesociety. The emergence of computing and communicating technologieshas proved a shot in the arm for written communication. Dr.Panditaradhya traced the development of encoding standards from ASCIIto ISCII to Unicode to Nudi ( a local standard approved by Governmentof Karnataka). He said though English was a dominating language incomputers, it is not any more. Any script in any language of theworld can now be stored in computers. Cashing on his experience inNudi, the speaker showed how Kannada scripts could be entered incomputers. Answering a query from the audience, Prof. Panditaradhyaclarified that Nudi employs phonetic based data entry method unlikeBaraha which uses transliteration technique for data entry. Comparedto its competitors, he said Nudi has several features and is based onscientific studies. Nudi, a product of Kannada Ganaka Parishat, is astandard approved by Government of Karnataka.

Mr. G. N. Narasimha Murthy, Secretary, Kannada Ganaka Parishat who waspresent during the lecture, gave a demo on "Kannada Viswakosha"(Kannada Encyclopaedia) which was recently released by Prasaranga ofUniversity of Mysore, Mysore. He showed browsing, searching,multimedia, audio and other features of the encyclopaedia. Similarlya demo of "Pampa Bharata" a legendary work of 10th century poet Pampawas shown. Vikramarjuna Vijaya, also known as Pampa Bharata, is aKannada version of the Mahabharata which was originally written byVyasa. The electronic version of the work, to be released shortly,contains the original poems with meaning and annotations. The oralrecitation of the poems both in Gamaka method and normal readingmethod is given to each poem.

The program was well attended by students and staff of MyDLIS, otherdepartments in the campus and general public. The whole programme wasmanaged by the student representatives.