Congrats Santhosh for the new endeavor !!<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">CherianTinu Abraham</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tinucherian@gmail.com">tinucherian@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 2:07 PM<br>Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Santhosh Thottingal joins the Foundation Engineering Team and Gerard Meijssen as technology outreach consultant.<br>To: "Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia." <<a href="mailto:wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org">wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org</a>><br>
<br><br>Santhosh Thottingal joins the Foundation Engineering Team and Gerard Meijssen as technology outreach consultant. <div>Gerard Meijssen , if I may call as an indophile, is very dear for many of us and others who reads india mailing list :)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Special congratulations and best wishes to both of them. </div><div><br></div><div>Regards</div><div>Tinu Cherian<br><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Alolita Sharma</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:asharma@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">asharma@wikimedia.org</a>></span><br>
Date: Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:40 PM<br>Subject: [Wikitech-l] Welcoming our Internationalization/Localization Features Engineering team<br>To: Wikimedia developers <<a href="mailto:wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org" target="_blank">wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org</a>><br>
<br><br>Hi Everyone,<br>
<br>
Please join me in welcoming our newly formed<br>
Internationalization/Localization (I18n/L10n) features engineering<br>
team. The I18n/L10n team will focus on design and development of open<br>
source tools to improve screen font rendering on web browsers using<br>
open web fonts, input method tools including keymaps and<br>
transliteration software to support Non-Roman languages specifically<br>
starting with Indic languages this year.<br>
<br>
The members on this team are Siebrand Mazeland as product manager,<br>
Niklas Laxström and Santhosh Thottingal as software engineers, and<br>
Gerard Meijssen as technology outreach consultant.<br>
<br>
Siebrand Mazeland got pulled into Free and Open Source software<br>
translating the FreeBSD Handbook in 2004. After translating a few<br>
hundred pages, and making a few edits on Wikipedia (to the FreeBSD<br>
article of course), he rediscovered Wikipedia in 2006. As an<br>
administrator for the Dutch Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, he was<br>
introduced to "translating MediaWiki" on an obscure wiki (“Betawiki”)<br>
run by Niklas Laxström. Siebrand finds it hard to believe that he is<br>
still going strong on language support in open source projects after 5<br>
years. With <a href="http://translatewiki.net" target="_blank">translatewiki.net</a> now providing almost 20 opens source<br>
projects with excellent translations and a community of 3,000<br>
translators, he is thrilled to join the Wikimedia Foundation<br>
engineering team as I18n Product Manger, along with his long-time<br>
friends from translatewiki - Niklas and Gerard.<br>
<br>
Niklas Laxström is a software and language engineer, with a M.A. in<br>
Language Technology (pending thesis review). He has been a free<br>
software contributor since about 2003, mostly focused on translation.<br>
Niklas joined Wikimedia in 2004 and soon became an administrator of<br>
Finnish Wikipedia and a MediaWiki translator. To aid his translation<br>
work, he created a wiki which has grown to become <a href="http://translatewiki.net" target="_blank">translatewiki.net</a>,<br>
which now manages translation of dozens of free software projects in<br>
hundreds of languages. Niklas is the author of the Translate extension<br>
for MediaWiki. He is also president of Wikimedia Finland. Niklas has<br>
studied a number of languages including Russian and a little Tamil. In<br>
his spare time, he likes to go for long bicycle rides (taking the<br>
opportunity to improve OpenStreetMap) and to watch sci-fi films<br>
including his favorite Stargate SG-1 series.<br>
<br>
Santhosh Thottingal is a free software developer from Kerala, India.<br>
He has been in the aerospace and automotive related IT industry for<br>
the last 6 years. He has contributed to many free and open source<br>
(FOSS) projects. His projects have been around language computing,<br>
especially in his mother tongue Malayalam . He has contributed code,<br>
bug reports and translations to FOSS projects like GNOME, KDE,<br>
Openoffice/LibreOffice, Firefox, TeX, GLibc, Python, Aspell, Hunspell,<br>
m17n, scim to help improve Indic language support. He is an upstream<br>
developer for many packages in popular Linux Distros and is lead<br>
developer for Dhvani, an Indic language TTS, SILPA, an Indic language<br>
computing framework and a Pango-Cairo based PDF rendering library. He<br>
is project administrator of the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing FOSS<br>
developer community. His contributions to Wikimedia projects include<br>
Malayalam Wikipedia and Wikisource offline versions. He is currently a<br>
member of Wikimedia Language Committee. Santhosh is also constantly<br>
improving the readability of Wikimedia projects, especially in<br>
non-Roman languages with the Webfonts Mediawiki extension. He has also<br>
been improving the Input Tool Mediawiki extension. As a team member of<br>
the I18n team, he hopes to develop features that all wikis can use to<br>
display and render all languages. Santhosh comes from a farmers'<br>
family and is passionate about farming. Also as a fan of Malayalam<br>
literature, he has helped the Malayalam Wikisource community digitize<br>
and archive many precious works from Malayalam literature. He blogs at<br>
<a href="http://www.thottingal.in/blog" target="_blank">www.thottingal.in/blog</a>.<br>
<br>
And last but not least, in the Wiki world Gerard Meijssen is known as<br>
GerardM. He claims to be the one who has bored people to tears about<br>
languages and language technology via his blog and presentations. Now<br>
he has accepted the challenge to convince people about how<br>
improvements by the I18n/L10n team will make using MediaWiki and<br>
editing Wikimedia projects easy and fun. Gerard will be blogging<br>
officially on the WMF blog as well as on his personal blog about<br>
interesting and relevant topics. He sees his role in this team as the<br>
storyteller who will narrate the team’s progress as stories and help<br>
transform tools developed into new opportunities. Gerard has been<br>
involved in language standards, lexicography and terminology. He is<br>
particularly proud of demonstrating how a multilingual dictionary<br>
approach helps people find pictures on Wikimedia Commons. He has<br>
worked on projects to install and update software, medical terminology<br>
with OmegaWiki which is still an ultimate Wiktionary. He has also<br>
translated text and software on <a href="http://translatewiki.net" target="_blank">translatewiki.net</a>. He predicts that<br>
“languages in non-Roman scripts will do substantially better on the<br>
Internet as we get the word out how easy it is becoming to read and<br>
write. And the team’s projects will be in the forefront of this and<br>
may astound us all.”<br>
<br>
I’m proud to welcome this team of very passionate and accomplished<br>
people who have been bold in their many contributions to open source<br>
software. I hope that this team continues to change the landscape of<br>
free and open source language computing tools and help make every<br>
Wikipedia truly open and accessible to all people in all languages.<br>
<br>
Feel free to say hello to Santhosh, Niklas, Siebrand and Gerard online<br>
or next time you see them in person :-)<br>
<br>
--<br>
Alolita Sharma<br>
Director, Features Engineering<br>
Wikimedia Foundation<br>
<br>
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