Telugu As a Computational Language- E-magazines

E-magazines

-Dr Geeta Madhavi Kala

Magazines are the undeniable reason for the rapid progress of the Telugu language digitalization. There was a good demand for “native” fonts in the Telugu language in the early 2000s when the transition from typewriters to the computer field, which were an important part of press publishing. The word “native” here means, no “Unicode” is required.

Fonts design is not as simple as being used. However, since necessity is the source of new innovations, magazines have played a major role in Telugu language digitalization. Magazines with high circulation have created their own fonts.

From the Madras Chronicle, the first Telugu magazine in 1835, to the online magazine Nechcheli, which started in the second half of 2019, the publication of almost 175 years of publishing totally revolutionized from print to the Internet.

Fonts such as Lekha, Rangavalli, and Potana were introduced to Telugu magazines in the early 2000s. The introduction of the system and the resources required to type and to display Telugu script on a computer screen in the Microsoft operating system in 2003 paved the way for Telugu journals. It has become a simple solution to create a magazine with local fonts and keep it online as a PDF.  With the rapid availability of technology to load pages, the Unicode revolution soon led to the rapid design of Internet magazines.

We can now find many online magazines on the Internet that come with advanced technology to meet the needs of the times.

Among the early Telugu online magazines were Pranahita, Poddu, Tulika, etc.., literary magazines like Emata, Kaumudi, Sujanaranjani, which have been maintained for over a decade, Saranga, Neccheli (women’s magazine), Kolimi, Godavari, Akshara, Madhuravani, Sirimalle, which started in the last decade and continue. Achanga Telugu, Malika, Kottapalli (Children’s Magazine), etc., and partially ongoing women’s magazines such as Bhumika and Vihanga online magazines have come to light because of Unicode Telugu. Many of these came from the blog ideas.

It has now become a routine for every print Magazine to come out as an online edition as well. It is no exaggeration to say that the coming era will be entirely the age of digital magazines.

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