Akhar software ready for major upgrade, Punjab Police gets beta version

Punjabi University, Patiala, is all set to roll out an improved version of its flagship software ‘Akhar’, which means ‘word’ in Punjabi, with advanced features like multilingual search, spell check with emphasis on nouns , Punjabi grammar check and transliteration to Gurmukhi text (Punjabi script used in West Punjab in Pakistan), Devanagari and Roman scripts and reverse to Shahmukhi. The software was first introduced in 2016 for Punjabi, Hindi, Shahmukhi and English typing, Launched as the first word processor with powerful features for spell checking and translation. The advanced software developed by the Research Center for Technological Development of Punjabi Language at the University will be launched to the public in two months. This has already been made available to the Punjab Police for analysis of crime statistics. Punjab DGP Dinkar Gupta said that the software is proving to be very helpful in crime data analysis. “We got this tool from Punjabi University Patiala about six months back. This crime data is very easy to analyse,” Gupta told The Indian Express

. Upanaan is a product of analysis of over 2.5 crore Punjabi words from various sources. The new version will be equipped with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to convert Gurmukhi images to text and Braille. “An analysis of about 2.5 crore Punjabi words from various online platforms revealed that more than 2.5 per cent of the words in Punjabi were spelled incorrectly. In fact, an analysis by us last year showed that in the Punjabi version of Wikipedia, about 9 percent of Punjabi words were spelled incorrectly,” said a computer science professor who heads the Research Center for the Technological Development of Punjabi Gurpreet Singh Lehal said. Indian Express on phone. Lehal also revealed that the database also included the official website of the Punjab government, in which Punjabi words were spelled “wrong”. Lehl said,

There were many words that were half Punjabi and half English. There was not much emphasis on spell checking.” Lehal said that while developing the improved version of the software, different versions of the names of Punjabi University students from the Punjab School Education Board and the names of the accused in the police records were entered in the database. “Since the details also contained the names of the parents, we were able to collect a huge database,” he added. “We will be rolling out the upgraded version of the software to the public in two months’ time,” Lehl said. He said: “We have already made it available to the Punjab Police. This helps the police to find the results for any name or city, which may have been spelled differently by the officer in charge. Currently, according to Lehl, Akhar 2016 has 7,412 users. The latest version will also include an email feature and a Punjabi thesaurus. .