[Student-projects] GSOC 2014 - Project Idea : Indian Language Computing in Firefox OS

[Praveen Sridhar]

Greetings to all,

Myself Praveen Sridhar, a 3rd year Mechanical Engineering student at School
of Engineering, CUSAT. I'm a programmer by passion and am in love with web
technologies.

Whilst I have gone through the idea list and am interested in multiple
projects suggested by SMC mentors, I'd like to share my own idea which I'd
like to work on.

I'm sure all of us must have followed the recently concluded MWC, wherein
Mozilla announced its plans for a 25$
smartphone<http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/23/mozillas-partners-launch-new-firefox-os-phones-as-it-looks-to-expand-to-new-markets-in-2014/>.
Mozilla's aim in such a device is to bring the experience of the Web to
first time Users of smartphones. I believe that India would be a big market
for such devices.

To actually reach out to first time smartphone users, the localization of
the platform has to be perfect. This is where my idea comes in. Although
there is basic support for Indian Languages on Firefox OS already, not much
has been done to improve the Keyboard
input/IME<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Developing_Firefox_OS/Customizing_the_keyboard>to
match with the way Indian Languages are naturally expressed. The
project
would be to work out intuitive Keyboards/IME and input methods which would
enable the common user to use and interact with the Firefox OS easily. The
project will extend/adapt the capabilities of projects like SILPA and
Varnam and put all its power into a mobile device to be used by the
end-users directly.

The best part of Firefox OS platform is that it is completely open source
and all the development process can be followed on Github and bugzilla (and
of-course the mailing lists).
I have experience in developing for Gaia, which is the user interface for
Firefox OS. I'm also helping in fixing bugs in Gaia. Since the Keyboard and
inputs are an integral part of the UI, I'm pretty much equipped for the
task at hand.

I'm just starting to scratch at the possibilities and there is certainly a
lot more refining needed for the project.
Please do give your valuable opinions and suggestions.


Regards,
Praveen Sridhar
irc : psbots
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