Grants:IEG/MediaWiki and Javanese script/Profile
This project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant
Benny Lin
editHi, my name is Benny Lin from Solo, Indonesia. My experience with Wikipedia started more than 8 years ago when I started editing Indonesian Wikipedia. Soon after that I know about Javanese Wikipedia, which is my mother tongue (together with Indonesian). When I started contributing in jv.wp in 2008, I realized that the site is lacking Javanese script, a script native to Java; indeed, the internet has very few information about it, although it has a long history before being supplanted and gradually lost to the Latin orthography.
Since 2009 the Javanese script has been accepted in Unicode, and starting in 2012, I've began developing a natural-typing Javanese transliteration, which reduces the required key combinations that the users -- which already accustomed to writing Javanese language in Latin -- have to remember to bare minimum.
It is my intention to see the Javanese script revived, especially in this digital age, in the hope that the younger generations will not forget their own script. At the start of the grant request, I foresighted that Wikipedia (with it's amazing team of developers) are the best platform to develop an open source transliteration, which could have the widest impact on the 80+ million Javanese speakers worldwide. It is now has been realized with the ULS enabled in all wikis. Before that, people have to go through the hassle of installing font and memorizing unstandardized keyboard layout. Now people can write and read Javanese script with ease across more than 280 sites.
I live right in the heart of Javanese culture, surrounded with many resources, people, and government which care a lot about our heritage; and I believe this grant would enable a lot of people, offline and online alike, to be able to use MediaWiki software and Wikimedia sites to preserve the Javanese script.