Narayam – A new Mediawiki extension

Let me introduce a new Mediawiki extension that is developed for inputting text

Narayam, a new Mediawiki extension is developed for inputting text in the various text fields of a Mediawiki installation. This extension is more relevant and useful to the users of the wikis that use non-latin scripts. The extension is developed by Junaid P.V.

Image of Narayam - Image courtesy - Sadhik Khalid

Why the typing solutions need to be integrated to wikis?

Active Indian Language wikimedians (or all wikimedians who use non-latin scripts to input text) know that  inputting non-latin text to wikipedias is a major challenge.  Most of the active wikipedians are depending on various third party tools to overcome this challenge. Over time active wikimedians will get accustomed with these third party tools and continue to contribute to wiki with the same.

But for the new users (and for the users who try to contribute to wiki from different conditions), inputting text to a language wiki (especially for the wikis that use non-latin scripts) is a major challenge. Malayalam wikimedians had spotted this issue long back in 2007 and we found that this is the major road block for community development in Malayalam wiki projects. So with the help of few Malayalam wikimedians, who are developers, we developed a Malayalam typing solution for wiki and integrated it to Malayalam wikipedia in early 2007. Read more about this story in my previous blog post.

Later in 2010, Junaid has developed a new tool to overcome issues in the old tool and to include various features. Another Malayalam wikipedian Sadhik Khalid also contributed to the integration of the tool to Malayalam Wikipedia. Initially the tool was only able to handle one typing scheme at a time, later it was enhanced to handle more than one typing scheme. Apart from the Transliteration scheme, the InScript scheme is also implemented in Malayalam wikipedia using the tool.

Features of the tool

• The tool is language and keyboard independent.
• It works by utilizing rules in certain format, so by creating rules table, the tool can be used for implementation of any transliteration and keyboard simulation.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, later this tool is extended to implement transliteration and other keyboard layouts for various Indian languages like Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Sanskrit, and so on. Out of these, Bengali Wiki use three input methods to meet requirements of people spanned across two countries (India and Bangladesh).

Developing a Mediawiki extension

Even though the tool integrated to some language wikis mentioned above (and the tool is working fine), we felt that it will be more good if the solution is developed as a Mediawiki extension. Some of the advantages of making a Mediawiki extension solution are:

• Avoid manual loading of the tool as it will be loaded along with other scripts in Mediawiki.
• Any Mediawiki installation (not only WMF wikis) can utilize the extension to enable input methods on them.
• Implementing input scheme for multiple scripts will become more easy.

Keeping these points in mind, Junaid had developed a Mediawiki Extension for the typing solution. The extension is available at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Narayam

The extension contains two components, tool and typing schemes.

The tool is general for all the schemes. But the typing schemes need to be developed for each script and can be integrated to the extension. Currently the typing schemes are developed and integrated only for few Indic Scripts like Malayalam, Tamil, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bhojpuri, and Bengali. To find widespread usage of the extension more schemes have to be developed for variouse languages. For that the support from respective language community is required. If typing scheme need to be developed for your language please contact me at shijualexonline@gmail.com

Narayam in action

For time being the extension is installed in Junaid’s test wiki. It is available here: http://testwiki.junaidpv.in/wiki/Main_Page

Please see the various typing schemes in action in Junaid’s wiki. In normal case, in language wikis only those schemes related to the script used in the wiki will be enabled. In the test wiki various schemes for Tamil, Malayalam, Sanskrit, and Benagli are enabled just for demonstration purpose.

Also the Extension is now part of translate wiki. It is available here: Please localize it to your language.

Trivia

Many wikipedians might be wondering why this extension is named as Narayam. The reason is simple. Narayam is the name of a writing instrument used in ancient South India. Since this tool is also developed for writing or inputting text, Junaid named it as Narayam. Read more about Narayam here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narayam