Indian Language Computing - Products Details

In all our future posts we are now going to discuss in detail the various products in developed by M/s.CDAC, Pune for Indian Langauge Computing . In step by step we shall discuss the following products starting from the DOS based products to right up to WINDOWS and LINUX.

Initially we shall talk about the GIST Cards :-

C-DAC GIST Cards : An Introduction (Part I)

C-DAC GIST Cards are PC add-on cards that allow the use of Indian & other scripts along with English in character-oriented packages like dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, WordStar, FoxPro, FoxBASE, QBasic etc., and compilers like C, C++, Clipper etc. on MS-DOS. A software driver allows the user to type in English and other scripts using the INSCRIPT Phonetic keyboard. The firmware for downloading the scripts is provided along with the GIST Card. Printing through the packages is done using the normal print commands of that package.

Support for GIST Card is also available on PC-based UNIX (Ver 3.2 & SVR4) platform. The Terminal Emulation software GLINK enables a PC with a GIST Card to emulate a GIST Terminal. GIST Card is machine (node) specific, and can also be used in a LAN (Novell NetWare 3.x) environment. GIST Card, however, does not support Windows environment and graphics applications. C-DAC GIST Cards have a tremendous potential of use for various applications, especially where databases have to be compiled and maintained and reports / forms / documents have to be generated in the local/regional Indian language. Similarly, C-DAC GIST Card has penetrated the lower end of the business sector where it is being used for various low-level applications like accounting, payroll, inventory etc.

Independent software developers have already developed application packages in FoxPro, QBasic etc. with the help of C-DAC GIST Card which give the facility of using the local/Indian language on computers to the users of these packages.