SMC Domain Outage and Fix

SMC Software

SMC Fonts Manjari was recently spotted in the title cards of the movie Rifle Club and Nupuram in the title cards of Painkili.

Research

• Sreeram published a dataset in huggingface withprinted text images and their corresponding text from wikisource which will hopefully help as OCR training source.

In News

M. P. Parameswaran's books to be released under the free license.

Scientist, thinker and writer Dr. M. P. Parameswaran has given his consent to make his works available in the public domain under the free license. On January 1, International Public Domain Day, at a ceremony held at M.P.'s residence, the first batch of books to be digitized was received by Manoj Karingamathil on behalf of Wikimedia. The digitization work is being carried out by Sahya Digital Conservation Foundation.

P. Muraleedharan, Central Executive Committee Member of Sastra Sahitya Parishad, Manoj Kumar, Coordinator of Wikimedians of Kerala User Group Ranjith CG, Director of Sahya Digital Conservation Foundation, Jinoy Tom Jacob, Ranjith Panicker, Subin K.S, M.P. Krishnan and Leena attended the event. The digitized books will be made available on Wikimedia Commons and the Parishad Archive.

Community Notes and Events

• Kannan Shanmukhom, Admin at Malayalam Wikipedia delivered a session on "സ്വതന്ത്ര വിജ്ഞാനത്തിന്റെ ആകാശങ്ങൾ' at the Kerala Legislature International Book Festival on 10th January 2025.

• DrupalTVM and ICFOSS collaboratively hosted the Drupal CMS Launch Party on 15th January 2025, at 5:00 PM IST, at the International Center for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), Karyavattom, Trivandrum.
• Santhosh Thottingal inaugurated the Thiruvananthapuram District Conference of Malayalam Aikya Vedi (മലയാളം ഐക്യവേദി) on 25th January 2025.

• Democratic Alliance for Knowledge Freedom (DAKF) organized a discussion and seminar on the Draft Digital Personal Data Protection Rule 2025 on 15th February 2025, in Thiruvannathapuram

• Manoj Karingamadathil participated in the 2nd Wikisource Conference 2025 in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, on February 14-16, 2025, representing the Malayalam Language. After nearly a decade-long wait since the last conference in Vienna in 2015, this event aims to enhance global collaboration among Wikisource contributors under the theme Wikisource: Transform & Preserve Heritage Digitally.

• In the National Seminar Series, "Malayalam:Life and Praxis", organized by the Tirur Regional Centre of Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit during 18-20 February 2025, Santhosh Thottigal presented a session on 'മലയാളത്തിന്റെ ഡിജിറ്റൽ പരിണാമം' and Kavya manohar presented a session on 'കമ്പ്യൂട്ടർ മനസ്സിലാക്കുന്ന മലയാളഭാഷ'.

• Wikiproject India hosted a datathon in Association with the International Mother language day collaborating with Indian communities during February 21 to February 28, 2025. The datathon focussed on adding and improving labels, descriptions, and aliases in their mother tongue, enhancing Wikidata entries for places in India and notable Indian personalities, expanding language-related content on Wikidata, particularly items associated with languages of India.
• Wiki Loves Folklore in India is a photographic competition to enjoy and celebrate the cultural diversity of Indian Folklore held during the Months of February and March 2025.
• Wikisource Workshops were held at Govt HSS Velliyode, Kozhikode District on 21 Jan 2025 and at Krishna Menon Memorial Govt. Women's College, Kannur on 28 Feb 2025.
• Wikidata and Open Street Map Communities jointly organize a Datathon and a Mapathon in association with Open data day 2025. In the datathon, participate by adding and improving data about places around you, focusing on topics related to the event's theme. Help enhance the global accessibility of open knowledge by enriching Wikidata entries and linking them to OpenStreetMap. In the Mapathon, improve map data on OpenStreetMap by adding missing details, essential geographic information, and enhancing overall accuracy and strengthen the connection between OpenStreetMap and Wikidata by linking relevant entries, making maps more informative and useful.
• NIT Calicut will celebrate 20 years of FOSSMeet during March 14-16, 2025. Anish A. will be speaking at FOSSMeet on building an Open Source Community.