User:Suhailahmed

Personal information

Email Address: ssuhail.ahmed93@gmail.com

Blog URL: suhailponders.blogspot.in

Freenode IRC Nick: suhail

Current education: B.Tech Computer Science and Engineering at MES College Of Engineering(Affiliated to The University of Calicut)

Why do you want to work with the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing?

 Only recently did I get to know more about SILPA and got the courage to look into it and I believe that with proper guidance
 I can contribute to it. Since SILPA houses Indic language processing I see the benefit that it can bring
 in getting indigenous people to use technology more.

Do you have any past involvement with the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing or another open source project as a contributor?

I have no past involvement with SMC or other open source projects as a contributor.
I have gone only as far as cloning github files of interested projects and building them manually for testing and checking the code.

Did you participate with the past GSoC programs, if so which years, which organizations?

I am applying for GSoC for the first time.

Do you have other obligations between May and August ?

I have no other obligations from May 6 onwards. Till then I have my University Exams.

Will you continue contributing/ supporting the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing after the GSoC 2014 program, if yes, which area(s), you are interested in?

Sure. I am interested in SILPA project and will continue contributing as much as I can for this project even after GSoC.

Why should we choose you over other applicants?

My strongest point is my enthusiasm to learn new things. 
Along with my enthusiasm I have done a few small scale projects which has enabled me with complementary skills. 
My experience with Jinja and Flask is limited but I am a quick learner.
By choosing me over others I believe that in this association we both stand to gain immensely.

Proposal Details

Goals of this project

      To improve the current implementation of SILPA.

Task to be accomplished

      Implement REST API for SILPA
      Improve Transliteration module
      Integrate Webfonts module
      Write good documentation and provide essential test cases to check the functionality.

How I plan to accomplish each task.

      1. Implement REST API for SILPA
                  -Flask has an extension called Flask-RESTful using which we can easily build REST API.
                  -A class can be defined with GET and POST functions.
                  -Flask-RESTful can handle conversion to JSON.
                  -Validate data of PUT using reqparser to parse the data.
                  -But REST can also be implemented without Flask-restful with just flask and python.
                  -Not all the features of Flask-restful will be used.
                  -It can be implemented in either way whichever the mentors prefer.
      
      2.Improve transliteration module
                  -To correct the mapping of english to ipa a separate IPA charmap is required because on testing the
                  transliteration the english characters fall in range where mapping is wrong.So by providing appropriate mapping 
                  it can be fixed.
                  -Another alternative is to use the CLDR project mapping which supports transliteration of several Indic languages.
                  -By this we can cover cross indic transliteration and also improve ISO15919 to Indic transliteration.
                  

      3.Integrate Webfonts module
                 -The webfonts module does not work when server is set.SO the main goal is to debug the module.
                 -Follow the flask guidelines to set the webfonts module according to standard.
                 

What I have done so far

      I have forked the SILPA code from repository and also set it up locally. I also set the transliteration module and webfonts module.

 I went through the code and tried undestanding it by modifying it.I have also sent a pull request for a minor code change in webfonts module.

Proposed Timeline

May 6-May 15: Implement the REST API using Flask-Restful

May 16-May20: Research more on the transliteration logic and plan the rules for different transliteration.

May 21-31: Fix the transliteration to ipa from english by fixing the charmap rule.

June 1- June8: Correct the ISO15919 to Indic transliteration referring to CLDR chart.

June 9-June20: Improve cross indic transliteration by removing source to malayalam to target chaining by adding dictionaries of other languages.

June23: Time to submit mid-term evaluation.

June 21-27: Implement transliteration of IPA to indic languages.

June 28-July 5: Research more on the webfonts module by going through flask guidelines and find out bugs to fix

July 6-July 15: Improve the webfonts module by fixing issues.

July 15-25: Implement a tool to generate configuration file for fonts.

• Documentation and test will be written after implementation of each part.

If the project moves as per timeline then will also contribute to i18n.