An easy #usability win for #Wikipedia

Franklin typewriter

#Wikimedia projects where people edit in their own Indian language will benefit hugely from the Narayam extension. It provides input methods for Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Sanskrit, and Bengali. Bengali is special in that it will give our editors three options.

Typing on the Franklin typewriter may seem daunting, but it still has a QWERTY layout. Now suppose that it has an AZERTY layout as well and you are to type blind with ten fingers ... that gives only an easy approximation of the problem.

With an extension in SVN, with Roan having had a look at it, with a developer and many communities eager to get it in production and extend it to other languages as a matter of urgency, the next step should be obvious.

What we should not do is have perfection be the enemy of the good. The first step does not need to be in core and it does not have to include all the other languages immediately. It would be great to hear continued buzz on the India mailing list about the next steps when the first step is taken.

Please get this extension into production as soon as possible.

Thanks,

       GerardM