[Tugindia] Re: Devnag

[amitabhtrehan at softhome.net]

Hi cvr and the list,
It has been such a wonderful experience being involved with the devnag 
package - there has been so much to learn and such wonderful interactions. I 
think it is very important that TugIndia accept the baton and take the wokr 
forward. The developers - John, Dominik and Anshuman, and all others, have 
done a wonderful job indeed. There have been wonderful improvements in the 
recent times, and I think the whole package is on the brink of something 
wonderful. I think the core group at TRV and people like Alex AJ, who also 
brought out the bold, italic variants can really envisage something. I know, 
it is too much to ask everything of the same set of people!
For one thing, I had passed on the suggestion to Anshuman of bringing the 
package to sarovar. This suggestion is reiterated.
Unfortunately, at a personal level, I am not able to give much more than 
testing of new facilities (actually, with the efforts of dr. Wagish Shukla) 
of devnag to the package. Things are very tied up for the moment and will 
remain so for some time. Still,hoping things with devnag can go forward. 


Amitabh Trehan 

Radhakrishnan CV writes: 

> Here is a mail from Dominik Wujastyk, one of the current maintainers
> of Devnag package which is self explanatory.  Do anyone in this list
> volunteer to take charge of the maintainance and further development?  
> 
> If you do, please write to me at the earliest. 
> 
> Radhakrishnan 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 12:13:57 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
> From: Dominik Wujastyk <ucgadkw at ucl.ac.uk>
> To: Radhakrishnan C V <cvr at river-valley.com>
> cc: Kaveh Bazargan <kaveh at focalimage.com>, "John D. Smith" <jds10 at cam.ac.uk>,
>    Anshuman Pandey <apandey at u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Devnag 
> 
> 
> Dear Radhakrishnan, 
> 
> Greetings from cold, sunny Cambridge!  I hope you and everyone at
> Focal Image are well. 
> 
> I am writing about devnag, the Devanagari package for TeX and LaTeX
> originally written by Frans Velthuis.  This is probably the most
> widely-used package for doing Devanagari with TeX.  It has been very
> successful, with many books being produced using it.  It has also
> continued to grow and develop, albeit slowly.  I was involved myself
> for some time in originating and maintaining the LaTeX support files.
> John Smith (Cambridge) took up maintenance of the C code of the
> pre-processor, which he substantially re-wrote, strengthened and
> updated.  Others like Francois Patte and Anshuman Pande worked on
> extending the macros and updating the documentation.  Marc Csernel and
> Zdenek Wagner both contributed.  Most recently, Kevin Carmody has
> updated and added features to the package, effectively producing a new
> release.  There is talk of adding Vedic accentuation in the next round
> of changes. 
> 
> To try and bring some order to a development effort, which was about
> to branch, John, Anshuman and I decided that it was time to go to the
> Sourceforge, and Anshuman lodged the devnag package there last July
> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/devnag). 
> 
> However, things have got stuck at this point.  We have all given a lot
> of time and support to devnag over many years, and we are all still
> rather attached to the project and would like to remain in contact
> with it, and even make contributions if we can.  But the time has come
> for all of us to hand the project over, if possible, to other people
> who are willing and able to take stronger responsibility for its
> development and maintenance.  At the very least, the existing code and
> documentation should be reviewed, checked for errors, and packaged
> into a new maintenance release.  Kevin Carmody's updates should be
> reviewed and - as appropriate - folded into the main development trunk
> of the project. 
> 
> Do you think, Radhakrishnan, that this would be an appropriate task
> for the Indian TeX Users Group? 
> 
> If I may, I'd like to mention what I see as the main point of
> sensitivity: that those like Patte and Carmody who have contributed to
> the project (and indeed, Anshuman, John, and myself), should not feel
> that the project is being torn out of our hands, but rather that it is
> being supported in a new and better home, and that we are still
> welcome to participate if we wish. 
> 
> Finally, the father of the whole package, Frans Velthuis.  To the best
> of my knowledge, Frans withdrew from active involvement in the project
> a couple of years after his initial Metafont, TeX and C work was
> complete.  At first, the project was a commercial one.  But
> subsequently, a lump sum of money was raised for Frans from the
> Groningen University Computing Lab and the Wellcome Trust (where I
> worked at the time), and Frans donated his code for free use by all.
> With that, he ceased work on it.  That was over ten years ago, I
> believe. 
> 
> With best wishes,
> Dominik
> _______________________________________________
> Home:        http://www.tug.org.in/
> unsubscribe: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/tugindia