Greenstone Support for South Asia

Basic user interfaces for Greenstone now exist for 10 South Asian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Singhalese, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu). Of these languages, full user interfaces exist for Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil, and the collection developers' interface (GLI) exists in addition for Kannada, Marathi and Tamil.

The "macro" files for the latest versions of the South Asian language interfaces can be downloaded in the compressed file South_Asian_langage_interfaces.zip (see below for installation details).

How to activate South Asian languages in Greenstone ?
How to make your language the default interface language of GSDL ?
Greenstone Translators for South Asian Languages

Here are the language interfaces automatically included with the more recent versions of Greenstone:

Version 2.73, 2.74, 2.75, 2.80 & 2.81: Basic user interfaces for Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Singhalese, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu; full user interface and GLI for Marathi.

Version 2.82: Above plus updates for Malayalam and Marathi; new interface for Gujarati.

Version 2.83: Above plus updates for Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu, GLI for Tamil, and Telugu.

Version 2.84: Above plus updates for Telugu and full user interfaces for Bengali, Dhivehi and Nepali.

The full Urdu interface completed after release of version 2.85 is available in the above consolidated interface file and at http://greenstonesupport.iimk.ac.in/multilingual.htm#urdu ; it will be incorporated in version 2.86.

Please visit this site created by NCSI, for some sample collections for five different Indian Language Interfaces in their Digital Library.

Two pilot Tamil Greenstone collections, developed by Prof. A. Neelameghan and S.K. Lalitha of SRELS with support from EIFL.net [http://www.eifl.net], are now available for public access on the New Zealand Digital Library website:

The collection on Tamil Literary Devices contains about 20 lists of devices used by authors in their intellectual works and discourses, categorised into 10 groups and presented as Word documents (most of these devices are also used in other languages than Tamil).

The collection on Tamil Figures of Speech contains about 190 figures of speech used in classical Tamil literature, grouped into 16 browsing categories.

Volunteers for language interface translation work should refer to language maintainers . Criticism and suggestions from users of the language interfaces are invited, and should be addressed to the contact given on the above page. In both cases, please copy your message to Dr. M. G. Sreekumar

1. Each language in Greenstone has a longname (full name) and a shortname (two-letter language code). For the South Asian languages presently available in Greenstone, these are:


2. Three types of language interface file may be available for a given language:

language.dm (e.g. hindi.dm) is the core (basic) interface file,             located in the macros folder within the Greenstone home             folder

language.dm2 (e.g. tamil.dm2) is the auxiliary interface file, also              located in the macros folder within the Greenstone home              folder [only available for languages for which the full user            interface is provided, presently Gujarati, Kannada,              Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil].

dictionary_shortname.properties (e.g. dictionary_kn.properties) is              the GLI interface file, located in the gli\classes folder              within the Greenstone home folder (presently available              only for Kannada, Marathi and Tamil).

3. The dm and dm2 files, if present, are activated by parameters in the main.cfg file, which is located in the etc folder within the Greenstone home folder (it may be C:\Program Files\Greenstone\, it depends on your installation). The GLI dictionary properties files, if present, are activated by parameters in the languages.xml file located in the gli/classes/xml folder within the Greenstone home folder.

Please note the following language interface updates are available for the following Greenstone versions:

Prior to 2.73: updates available for all available South Asian languages

Versions 2.73 to 2.81: updates available for Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu

Version 2.82: updates available for Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu

Version 2.83: update available for Telugu

Version 2.84: Above plus updates for Telugu and full user interfaces for Bengali, Dhivehi and Nepali.

Note that if you are using version 2.80, by error several languages (Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu) are not activated, even though installed. Thus when you update these languages, make sure that they are activated.

To update and activate a given language, complete the following steps:

1. Download the South_Asian_langage_interfaces.zip file and unzip it.

2. Go to the macros folder of the unzipped file, and copy the dm and dm2 files for the wanted language(s) into the Greenstone macros folder, replacing any older files which exist (don't copy the configuration_file folder)

3. Open the main.cfg file of your installation in an editor such as WordPad.

Note that this file is in utf-8 format, and it is possible that non-Latin characters may not display correctly; do not bother about this, when you are finished just click on "Save" not "Save as" - and the file should be saved in its original format. Alternatively, you may open it is Word, save as unformatted text, and then specify utf-8 when asked. Do NOT use the Unicode text option for saving in WordPad (this does not save as utf-8).

Make sure that the wanted language(s) are listed in the "Language" lines near the end of the file, ensuring that the line for each language has the correct shortname and longname for that language. For example, for Gujarati the following line should be added if not present:

Language shortname=gu longname=Gujarati default_encoding=utf-8

In versions 2.82, 2.83 and 2.84 all of the needed lines should already be correctly in place; in prior versions a line for Gujarati will have to be added; in 2.80 the lines for Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu are probably missing.

Make sure that the macro files you have copied into the system are listed in the macrofiles parameter. For versions 2.73 to 2.81, you will have to add gujarati.dm, gujarati.dm2, kannada.dm2, malayam.dm2 and tamil.dm2; for version 2.82 only gujarati.dm2, kannada.dm2 and tamil.dm2; for version 2.83 nothing.

The new macrofile name(s) can be added at the end of the existing list, separated by spaces. Thus, after updating version 2.82, the last line of the list will read:

vietnamese.dm vietnamese2.dm gujarati2.dm kannada2.dm tamil2.dm

Alternatively, IF and ONLY if you are using version 2.82 and you have not already customised your main.cfg file, you can replace your main.cfg file with the one included in the macros/configuration_file folder of the "South_Asian_langage_interfaces.zip" file instead of adding the new macro names as above.

4. If you want to install one or more new GLI dictionary properties files, copy the file(s) that you want from the gli_dictionaries folder of the South_Asian_langage_interfaces.zip" file into the gli/classes folder within the Greenstone home folder, replacing any older files that exist (don't copy the configuration_file folder).

Then you will have to register any new dictionary properties files with GLI by adding or modifying the corresponding entry(ies) in the "languages.xml" file, which is in gli/classes/xml folder. For example, if the entry for Malayalam is:


Much more easy to do, and fine regardless of the Greenstone version unless the user has exceptionally customized the language.xml file, the old language.xml file can simply be replaced with the one found in the macros/configuration_file folder of the "South_Asian_langage_interfaces.zip" file.

In any case, GLI needs to be restarted before new GLI language interfaces can be used.

How to make your language the default interface language of Greenstone ?

To set a language as the default language for Greenstone, the main.cfg file can be modified (see above) by adding the following lines at the end of file (yl is the two-letter code for your language, the line starting with # is an optional comment line):

#Set default language to Yourlanguage(yl)
cgiarg shortname=l argdefault=yl

Alternatively you could change the default language of certain collections only. To do this edit the collection's collect.cfg file (in the collect\[collection_name]\etc folder) by adding the following line at the end:

(receptionist _gwcgi_?a=p&p=about&c=collection_name&l=yl&nw=utf-8)

Here "collection_name" is the short name of the collection (you will find it in the url when you are viewing the collection) and "yl" is the code for the chosen default language (see above for the list).

In either case, Greenstone must be closed and restarted for the defaults to be operational.

You can also temporarily change the language in the Greenstone user interface by clicking on "Preferences" within Greenstone, selecting your preferred language in the pull-down menu, and then clicking on home or a search or browse menu (DO NOT use the back button of your browser which will cancel the change).

Greenstone Translators for South Asian Languages


Updates for Bengali and Nepali Language Interfaces
Presently available in addition:
The remaining part of the Bengali interface has been processed and included. To install the update, download and unzip the Macros.zip, and place the extracted bengali.dm and bengali2.dm files into the macros folder (replace the old ones).

Download the Macro File ,for updating Nepali Language Interface
(Macros.zip contains: nepali.dm, nepali2.dm & GLI Interface, dictionary_ne.properties)

Bengali
Ms. Dilara Begum, Librarian, Head of Library, East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Gujarati
Mr. Lavji N. Zala, Assistant Librarian, Knowledge Exchange & Information Centre (KEIC), Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), India

Hindi
Dr. K.T. Anuradha, Senior Technical Officer, National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

Kannada
Prof. K.S. Raghavan and Ms. S.K. Lalitha, SRELS, Bangalore, India

Malayalam
Mr. K. Rajasekharan, Kerala Institute of Local Administration, Mulagunnathukavu, India
Dr. M.G. Sreekumar, Librarian and Head of Library, IIMK, Kozhikode, India

Marathi
Dr. Shubhada Nagarka, Lecturer, Department of Library and Information Science, University of Pune, India

Nepali
Dr. Mohan Raj Pradhan, Member-Secretary, HealthNet Nepal, Kathmandu
GLI Files: Macros, Dictionary
Nepali Translation files are integrated with 2.84 version.

Singhalese
Mr. Harsha Balasooriya, Assistant Librarian (Systems), Main Library, The Open University of Sri Lanka

Tamil
Prof. A. Neelameghan and Ms. S.K. Lalitha, SRELS, Bangalore, India

Telugu
Prof. Vara Lakshmi Rudrabhatla, Dept. of Library and Information Science, Andhra University, Vishakapatnam

Urdu
Mr. Ata ur Rehman, LISolutions, Islamabad, Pakistan
Urdu core module macro completed by LISolutions: Macro Files
Note: This interface has been completed after release of version 2.85, so will be incorporated in 2.86.