Free Telugu software tools

The department of information technology, Government of India, will now provide free software tools and fonts in Telugu to the general public. The department has so far brought out this initiative in Tamil and Hindi. After Telugu, tools and fonts in Punjabi and Urdu will be launched.

Addressing the media, Ajeer Vidya, joint secretary and financial adviser, ministry of communication and IT, said, "We aim to bring this technological revolution in all the 22 constitutionally recognised languages. While the Telugu software tools and fonts will be launched on Friday, those in Punjabi and Urdu will be released in November."

The ministry has committed to cover all the 22 languages by April 2006.

On Friday, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy will launch the CD and the website for the Telugu software tools and fonts in the presence of Dayanidhi Maran, Union minister for communication and information technology. The software can be freely downloaded from the website.

The department of information technology, commenced its language computing initiative through the setting up of a committee in November 2004. One of its early decisions was to aggregate tools and fonts from public and private players and release them for free among the public.

C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), an autonomous scientific society under the administrative control of department of information technology, is a partner in this language computing initiative.