Khmer Software Initiative

KhmerOS project will conduct a Unicode Typing contest that is organised by the National Information Communications Development Authority of the Royal Government of Cambodia (NiDA) and the WordForge Foundation, in the framework of the KhmerOS joint project at the end of this year 2006. The Unicode Typing Contest is a National Contest in which participants compete on typing and document formatting skills in Khmer language. More specifically, they compete on the speed at which they can type in Khmer (Unicode fonts) and on the speed at which they can prepare a simple office document.

On 19th-June to 23th-June, 2006, we had conducted a Khmer Software teacher training course at Enfants du Mekong in Banteay Menchey province. 36 Trainees has been joint this training course. We can say that Enfants du Mekong was a good place in Banteaymeanchey for conduct such training than other place in this province, because they has Computer LAB room with powerful PCs, enough electricity (they has their own electrict machine), good environment, big fans and air-conditioners,... It's was a big room that can contain 30 client PCs and 1 server. Now, in this room has only 15 clients and 1 server pcs, they will add more 15 pcs into this room on October 2006.

The new version of Mekhala (1.5.0.3) and Moyura (1.5.0.2) are now available for downloading. In this version we have improved some translations.To see what's new in this version click on Mekhala and Moyura for more information.

As you knew already, on 9-10th June 2006, KhmerOS, CambodiaCIC and Khmer Rough Trial project had joint an event called Civil Society Forum Fair at Phnom Penh Cultural Center (Chenla). A lot of Khmer products were showing during these two days. You would find many thing that you need such as: food and drink, jewelry and souvenir... KhmerOS had also presented its Khmer software. Some CDs which contain all Khmer software running on Windows, some SUSE Linux 10.1 CDs and some documentation were provided during these two days. Below are the detail amount of what we had provided:

On 17th June 2006, KhmerOS will make a small event called Installation Party at its office from 8:00AM to 17:00PM. Everyone are welcome to this party together with their computer to get Khmer software installed. Not only about installing software, we would also like to invite you to visit our place. It has been a very long time that we contact each other only via the internet. We have no chance to see each other. You'll enjoy some light food and drink (not beer, of cause) together with some souvenir.

The latest version of the famous Linux distribution, SUSE Linux, was released recently. With the good cooperation between KhmerOS and Novell, finally we were able to make SUSE Linux 10.1 the first Linux distribution that works well with Khmer out of the box. By choosing Khmer as the installation language (yes, you can install in Khmer), you'll get Khmer font, standard Khmer keyboard and many application translated. Some problem still exist though.

22-May-2006: We just committed the latest translation for the next KDE release which is 3.5.3. So far we have translated 44,372 messages which bring Khmer from 48th (in KDE 3.5.2) to 43th rank in the list of KDE translation statistic. A funny thing, we are 4 messages behind Lithuanian which is at 42th rank. If we would know this, we would translate 5 more messages :-) You can see the complete list at http://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/stable/toplist.php.

On 15th May 2006, there will be an event at BS Department Store, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It is called Internet Party. It's mostly related to Internet knowledge and experience sharing. KhmerOS will be there as well. We think that it is a good opportunity to bring Khmer Unicode to the people and to share our experience with it. Moyura, Mekhala and Chatzilla are what we'll show during the event. Sending email, chatting using Khmer unicode and browsing webpage or weblog that is written in Khmer Unicode are our main topics.

The localization team of KhmerOS is now trying to test and get detail information about some graphic designing and desktop publishing software such as GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus and Quarkexpress.

We had visited Enfants du Mekong at Banteaymeanchey province (Locate on the west the country, near Thai border.) on 10-11-April-2006. We had install Khmer Unicode and all Khmer software on 18 PCs, 15 PCs are in the training room and 3 for their staffs.