Project Madurai
Project Madurai (மதுரை தமிழ் இலக்கிய மின்தொகுப்புத் திட்டம்) is a voluntary initiative to publish free versions of ancient Tamil literature on the Internet.[1] Texts are published in both TSCII and Unicode formats. The project was led by Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram, Lausanne, Switzerland (Project Leader) and Dr. P. Kumar Mallikarjunan, Blacksburg, Va, USA (Dy. Project Leader).[2]
Electronic versions of printed texts (abbreviated as Etexts) of ancient literary works are important pedagoic and scholarly resources. Stored in easily accessible archives, they permit preservation and wider distribution of ancient literary works around the globe through the means of internet. Etexts of literary works also allow quick search for phrases, words, and combinations of words in any literary work. There are many projects currently active worldwide that attempts to put in electronic form ancient literary works.
Project Madurai is an open and voluntary initiative to collect and publish free electronic editions of ancient Tamil literary classics. This means either typing-in or scanning old books and archiving the text in one of the most readily accessible formats ("ETEXTS") for use on all popular computer platforms. All etexts will be distributed in both web/html and PDF formats.- Distributed through the World Wide Web servers, anyone located anywhere may download a copy for personal use or read what we publish on the internet, free of charge.
Since its launch in 1998, Project Madurai etexts are released in Tamil script form as per TSCII (Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange) encoding. Since 2004 we have started releasing etexts in Tamil unicode as well.
Project madurai is a free to download, free to distribute open source project.
Tools Used
During this project eKalappai is the tool used to type Tamil letters using standard US-en 101 Key board.[3]
Awards
- In 2007 Project Madurai the efforts of Project Madurai team was recognized and appreciated when its Project Leader Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram received the Iyal Award from The Tamil Literary Garden for their contribution to Tamil Literature through Information Technology
References
http://www.projectmadurai.org/pmworks.html
External links
- Project Madurai Homepage
- list of etexts available -up to release # 435
- Consolidated Index of Project Madurai Etexts in Unicode & PDF
- Classified Catalogue of Project Madurai Etexts in Unicode & PDF
- Introduction to Project Madurai