[A12n-forum] Revised list description for A12n-forum (& other lists)

["Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As part of revisioning approaches to communication in support of
multilingual computoing and internet in Africa, I have revised the list
description of A12n-forum at
http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/a12n-forum .

A12n-forum was originally intended as a place for more general information
about African languages and information and communications technology (ICT),
and also for communication and help on localization efforts. The latter role
is now shifted to another list, PAL-en (see below). 

So A12n-forum will continue to have news and discussion of general aspects
of African languages and ICT. It may also be able to serve as a place for
discussing localization policy in Africa, which is a young field that
deserves more attention.

A12n-forum is one of several lists and message boards set up over the last 6
years. The revision of its description is also part of another recalibration
of the roles of these various lists. Among them:

* A12n-collaboration
http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/a12n-collaboration is focused on
some more technical issues (character encoding and keyboards, for instance),
and will also consider some internationalization standards issues.
* PAL-en http://lists.panafril10n.org/mailman/listinfo/pal-en (PAL for
PanAfrican Localisation) serves as a list for localization projects and
messages posted to it (in plain text) are automatically translated into
French and Portuguese (to go to PAL-fr and PAL-pt respectively)

Several in French (Unicode-Afrique, A12n-entraide, and PAL-fr) 

And there are several QuickTopic.com message boards with narrower language
or country topics that continue to be used.

Linking all of these (and others) are the Bisharat site, as before, and more
recently also the PanAfrican Localisation site at PanAfriL10n.org, which
includes a large and growing wiki with information and links relevant to
localization and multilingual computing and internet in Africa. The latter
includes sections in which RSS feeds from many of the above forums and
selected other forums and websites, are included.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project