GSoC/2013/Project ideas

=Mentors=
 * 1) Santhosh Thottingal (santhosh on irc.freenode.net)
 * 2) Baiju M (baijum on irc.freenode.net)
 * 3) Praveen A (j4v4m4n on irc.freenode.net)
 * 4) Rajeesh K Nambiar (rajeeshknambiar on irc.freenode.net)
 * 5) Vasudev Kammath (copyninja on irc.freenode.net)
 * 6) Jishnu Mohan (jishnu7 on irc.freenode.net)
 * 7) Hrishikesh K.B (stultus on irc.freenode.net)
 * 8) Anivar Aravind (anivar on irc.freenode.net)
 * 9) Anilkumar K V (anilkumar on irc.freenode.net)
 * 10) Sajjad Anwar (geohacker on irc.freenode.net)
 * 11) Deepa V Gopinath (deepagopinath on irc.freenode.net)
 * 12) jain Basil  (jainbasil on irc.freenode.net)

=Ideas for Google Summer of Code 2013=
 * Please Read the FAQ

Apart from the following ideas, you can propose your own ideas


Internationalize SILPA project with Wikimedia jquery projects
Project:

SILPA project has many Indic language applications, but as of now, if somebody want to input in Indian languages, there is no built in tool in it. Similarly, the application is not internationalized. Both of these can be achieved by using the [//github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime jquery.ime] and [//github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime jquery.i18n] libraries from Wikimedia. A sample implementation is avaliable in our website. The i18n should be in the SILPA flask framework with a nice templating system. Similarly the interface should have webfonts using jquery.webfonts library.


 * Savannah Task
 * Expertise required: jquery, css, html5, python, flask
 * Mentor : Hrishikesh K B

More Details

 * jquery.i18n
 * jquery.ime
 * jquery.webfonts

A spell checker for Indic language that understands inflections
Project:

SILPA project has a spellchecker written using python with a not so simple algorithm. But still it is not capable of handling inflection and agglutination occurring in Indian languages especially south Indian languages. The dictionary we have for Malayalam spellchecker have about 150000 words. Of course we can expand the dictionary, but that doesn't have much value since words can be formed in Malayalam or Tamil etc by joining multiple words. In addition to that, words get inflected based on grammar forms(sandhi), plural, gender etc. Hunspell has a system to handle this, but so far nobody succeeded in getting it working for multi level suffix stripping as required for Malayalam. Some times a Malayalam word can be formed by more than 5 words joining together. We will need a word splitting logic or a table taking care of all patterns. The project is to attempt solving this with hunspell. If that is not feasible(hunspell upstream is not active), develop an algorithm and implement it.

Recently Tamil attempted developing a spellchecker using Hunspell with multi level suffix stripping. You can see the result here https://github.com/thamizha/solthiruthi. Our attempt should be first to use Hunspell to achieve spellchecking with agglutination and inflection. Probably it will require lot of scripting to generate suffix patterns, we can ask help from existing language communities too. If Hunspell has limitation with multi level suffxes- sometimes Indian languages require more than 5 levels of suffix stripping, we need to document it(bug and documentation) and try to attempt python based solution on top of SILPA framework.


 * Savannah Task
 * Expertise required: Average level understanding of grammar system of at least one Indian language
 * Complexity: Advanced
 * Mentor : Santhosh Thottingal

Indic rendering support in ConTeXt
Project:

ConTeXt is another TeX macro system similar to LaTeX but much more suitable for design. To find more information about ConTeXt, see the wiki http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page. ConTeXt MKII have Indic language rendering support using XeTeX. but MKII is deprecated, and the new MKIV backend doesn't support Indic rendering yet. The aim of this project is to add support to Inidic rendering to ConTeXt MKIV. XeTeX is using Harfbuzz to do correct Indic rendering.


 * '''Savannah Task
 * Expertise required: Understanding of the TeX system, experience in either LaTeX or ConTeXt and basic understanding of Indic language rendering. MKIV uses Lua, familiarity with Lua, opentype specifications or Harfbuzz will be added advantage.


 * Mentor : Rajeesh K Nambiar

\usemodule[simplefonts] \definefontfeature[malayalam][script=mlym] \setmainfont[Rachana][features=malayalam] \starttext മലയാളം \TeX ഉപയോഗിച്ച് ടൈപ്പ്സെറ്റ് ചെയ്തത് \stoptext Generate the output using command texexec --xetex 
 * More Details: ConTeXt mkii (deprecated) can work with XeTeX backend for Indic rendering. Here is a sample file:

Automated Rendering Testing
Project:

Automated Rendering Testing system for Indic languages. Currently there exists 3 main rendering engines in computing world - Uniscribe of Microsoft, CoreText (Apple Advance Typography - AAT) of Apple and Harfbuzz for *nix systems. The Opentype font specification is maintained by Microsoft and implemented in Uniscribe, which is used as baseline for Harfbuzz. At present, there is no automated mechanism to determine if Harfbuzz is rendering complex Indic text correctly or not - someone expert in relevant language has to manually inspect the output from hb-view. The project aim is to identify and implement an automated method to test the rendering. One method to do this might be to check the order of glyphs/glyph indices output by the rendering engine - this depends on the font too. A related topic is UTRRS


 * Savannah Task
 * Expertise required: Knowledge of Indic language rendering and Opentype specification.
 * Mentor : Rajeesh K Nambiar

More Details

 * https://fedorahosted.org/utrrs/
 * http://tdil-dc.in/utrrs/home/about

Port remaining modules to the new flask based Silpa
Project: Silpa is being re-written using flask framework. Core part is almost complete. But most of the sub modules written under old framework are need to be ported to new framework.

Expertise required: Python, Flask , Jinja , HTML, Javascript

Mentor : Vasudev/ Jishnu

Provide REST API for new flask based Silpa, including conversion of templates to this REST API from JSON RPC
Project: Silpa is now relying on JSONRPC. We need to, either completely move to REST API or provide REST API as an additional feature.

Expertise required: Python, Flask , Jinja , HTML, Javascript

Mentor : Vasudev/Jishnu

Separate templates from SILPA and have it inside modules packaged for pypi
Project: The templates used as User Interface is part of SILPA. this should be separated and should come as a part of individual modules.

this should give more idea on it

Expertise required:python,Flask, HTML,Javascript,CSS,jinja

Mentor : Vasudev/Jishnu

add Urdu/Arabic support for all modules in SILPA.
Expertise required:python,Flask, HTML,Javascript,CSS,jinja

Mentor : Vasudev

Converting indic processing modules currently in SILPA into Jquery library
Project: Port some of the silpa algorithms to Jquery.

Several modules, alogorithms in SILPA project is done in python now. But porting them to javascript(jQuery) helps developers. For example, cross language transliteration can be done jquery too if we port the algorithm and transliteration rules. Similarly the approximate search can be ported. A flexibile fuzzy search on the web pages will be possible if we have the algorithm in jquery. ALternatively these js libraries can be used with node.js using server side js concept too.

Expertise required: javascript,JQuery, python

Mentor :Jishnu

Improving cross language transliteration system.
Project:

Currently only Kannada and Malayalam are perfect rest all are first converted to Malayalam then to English due to lack of language internal. Also currently for English to Indic we use CMUDict so transliteration capability is limited to words in CMUDict only probably we could develop better method for English to Indic transliteration

CLDR has transliteration data for Indic languages. We can explore it and see the feasibility. For an intermediate representation of the scripts either IPA can be used or ISO 15919 standard can be used. All these must be supplemented with exception rules and special case handling to achieve more perfect result.

Expertise required:python

Mentor : Vasudev/Jishnu

Improving the webfonts module in Silpa using jquery.webfonts and proving more Indic and complex fonts as part of it.
Project:
 * Currently Silpa provides 36 webfonts. add more fonts to this collection.
 * Rewrote webfonts module to use the features of jquery.webfonts
 * reate a repo as per jquery.webfonts specification
 * Provide a clean api so that other websites can use our webfonts in their websites
 * Document the usage
 * Provide font preview and download options

Expertise required:jQuery, Python, technical understanding about fonts

Mentor : Jishnu

Add Indic / Malayalam rendering to MapServer + OpenLayers stack.
Both are OSGeo projects, and used in most of the WebGIS applications recently. MapServer is an open source development environment for building spatially enabled internet applications. OpenLayers is an open source JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers. OpenLayers is used by OpenStreetMap for its "slippy map" map interface.
 * Savannah Task

More Details

 * http://www.mapserver.org/
 * http://www.openlayers.org/
 * http://www.osgeo.org/

Add proper Indic / Malayalam support and rendering to GRASS GIS.
It is used by a number of organizations for analysing GIS data, creating maps etc. GRASS also is an OSGeo project. It is in the process of rewriting the old Tcl/Tk interface in the new wx-python.


 * Savannah Task

More Details

 * http://grass.osgeo.org/

Mentor: Sajjad

Building a system and API's for accessing and upadating Malayalamgrandham Bibligiography Data
Malayala Grantha Vivaram is a project intended to make available reliable bibliographic information on all Malayalam books published in Kerala and elsewhere. This Open data set contains Complete bibliography data from first Impression to 1995. This project wants to add following features to Malayalagrandham DB and build it as a bibliography web service
 * Facility for adding/linking copyright expired books to malaylagrandha vivaram
 * Adding ISBN & ISBN based seller discovery
 * Building Interface for Publishers through with they can contribute their publication bibliography.
 * Similar module for Libraries . That will be added to found in library section of each book
 * A module for building qr code of bibliography with a malayalagrandham link
 * Crowd sourced way for input and an approval queue interface for submissions.
 * MARC21 and MARCXML support
 * A dynamic visualisation interface for book information browsing
 * proper API, and app work flow documentation

Expertise required: Django / Ruby on Rails

Mentor: Anivar

Related Links
 * https://github.com/smc/malayalagrandham
 * http://malayalagrandham.com/about

Adding Braille Keyboard layouts for Indian Languages to m17n Library
Project is building support for Bharati Braille keyboard layouts in GNU/Linux systemes. Bharati Braille standard is the official Braille standard in India. A regular QWERTY keyboard is used for data entry. SDF-JKL keys are used for six dots of Braille. This support need to be built as m17n layouts. This will enable visually challenged people who studied braille layouts to use GNU/Linux systems easily with the help of Audio feedback from TTS

More Details

 * http://www.acharya.gen.in:8080/disabilities/bh_brl.php
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Braille
 * http://www.nongnu.org/m17n/

Mentor: Anilkumar K V

Developing Malayalam Calendar Support
This project is to build Malayalam Calendar support. Korganiser have support for Saka calender. The project is to build support for other calendars with a special focus on malayalam calendar

Following tasks are part of this work.
 * Building Malayalam (kollavarsham) Calendar support to KOrganiser.
 * Build All possible indian Calendars as a generic library/api

More Details

 * Understanding of Astronomical Algorithms
 * http://malayalam.usvishakh.net/calendars/panj_theory.pdf
 * https://github.com/smc/smc/tree/master/calendar/java/src/org/panchanga/indic

Mentor: Praveen A

Language model and Acoustic model for Malayalam language for speech recognition system in CMU Sphinx
CMU Sphinx is a large vocabulary, speaker independent speech recognition codebase and suite of tools, which can be used to develop speech recognition system in any language. To develop an automatic speech recognition system in a language, acoustic model and language model has to framed for that particular language. Acoustic models characterize how sound changes over time. It captures the characteristics of basic recognition units. The language model describes the likelihood, probability, or penalty taken when a sequence or collection of words is seen. It attempts to convey behavior of the language and tries to predict the occurrence of specific word sequences possible in the language. Once these two models are developed, it will be useful to every one doing research in speech processing. For Indian languages Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Marati, ASR systems have been developed using sphinx engine. In this project work is aimed at developing acoustic model and language model for Malayalam.

Mentor: Deepa Gopinath