Tamil Fonts, Keyboards & Software

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'..The talent, interest andenergy in Tamil Computing are widely scatteredaround the world. For nearly two decades, theexpertise and enthusiasm of this community werereflected as individual efforts mainly engagedin development of fonts and keyboard drivers.The fast changes in the computing environmentand worldwide proliferation of Internet usagehave widened the base of interest in TamilComputing and Internet applications...'Dr. M.Anandakrishnan at TamilInternet 2000

Stepwise instructions - to view UnicodeTamil text -

Analysis of TACE16 over present Unicode standard for Tamil language:. Issues with the present Unicode for Tamil language. The present Unicode standard for Tamil is considered not adequate for efficient and effective usage of Tamil in computers, due to the following reasons. Unicode code Tamil has code positions only for 31 out of 247 Tamil Characters. These 31 characters include 12 vowels. Tamil Unicode Converter Software Unicode Converter v.6.0.0 Hindi Unicode Converter is a unique software developed to convert Writing in Devnagari scripts like Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi etc. Written in Susha or Kruti font to Unicode. The converter is capable of processing hundreds of pages at one go.

1. You need to have Unicode Tamil fonts installedon your computer and the Operating System capableof rendering Tamil Scripts. Windows XP comes witha Unicode Tamil Font (Latha) and you shouldnot need to download/install a unicodefont.

2. In the Control Panel, in Regional/LanguagesOptions you will need to ensure that Indic/AsianLanguage option is checked.

3. Use a browser that is capable of handlingUTF-8 based pages (Netscape 6, Internet Explorer5) with the Unicode Tamil font chosen as thedefault font for the UTF-8 char-set/encodingview. Unicode Tamil Fonts may be downloaded fromhere

Some users of Windows 98/NT/ME/2000 Windows NTmay find that even with a Tamil Unicode fontinstalled and the browser correctly set to View> Encoding > Unicode, some of the Tamilletters are incorrectly displayed. An example ofthis incorrect display may be viewed here usingany TSC font -

'அதோஅந்தபறவைபோல வாழவேண்டும்
இதோஇந்தஅலைகள்போல ஆடவேண்டும்
ஒரேவானிலேஒரேமண்ணிலே
ஒரேகீதம்உரிமைகீதம்பாடுவோம்'

This may be due to theearlier version of usp10.dll used in theseoperating systems. To correct this, it may benecessary to update the usp10.dll file inWindows. To do this,

1. Download the latestversion of the usp10.dll file. [one of the sitesfor this download is here . Alternatively, you maydownload the file from the Microsoft sitehere - save the downloaded.exe file - double click on the file - give atemporary folder address - the program willextract a few files into the folder - of these'usp.zip' is the one you will need - discard theother files - unzip usp.zip - it will give twofiles viz: usp10.dll and readme.txt ]

2. Go to the Windows folderand find the file named usp10.dll (usually in theSystem and/or System32 sub folder). Rename thefile to a different name say usp10.old .

3. Place the newlydownloaded usp10.dll file in the same folder asthe renamed usp10.old file.

6. Re start thecomputer.

[in addition see also -How to Switch usp.dll and Making Uniscribe (USP10.DLL)Available for All Programmes]

Ram S.Ravindran on using Tamil Unicode inPersonal Computers -
'Most of the PC computer users use either Win 98or XP operating systems. I recognize there aresome of us who use Mac and Linux machines.

Win 98 OS and the applications that go withthem don't support Unicode format. However, ifyou have Win 98 you can input in UnicodeTamil.

Recently (March 2004) most of us came to knowof a neat freeware program called LedLineIt!. This programallows you to create Unicode font Tamildocuments. All you need is e- Kalappai 1.0 or 2.0 withthe Unicode kmx file.

You can create a Unicode Tamil document withthe use of Thenee, aVarangal or TSCArparnarfonts. This program doesn't use any dll orWindows hook ups. However the exe file is about3.4 megs.

If you have IE explorer 5.5 or higher you canuse Ledlineit to create Unicode Tamil text andcut and paste it in Hotmail or Yahoo Webmailemail text boxes. So if you have Win 98 you canin fact read and write in Unicode Tamil in theemail. Likewise you can paste it in Blogs.

Using Leadlineit , you can save the Unicodedocument file and print it out as well. As amatter of fact, you can even save the document asa HTML file for uploading to a free Web hostingservice. So you can use it as a HTML editor aswell.
If you have Win XP machine, to get the bestUnicode capability, you need to install the Asianfont capability. From start, go to settings,control panel and then select the regionalsettings. Install the Asian font capability. (youmight be asked to place the WinXP OS disk).After you install the Asian font capability ,select the regional font option again and selectadvanced. Select the Tamil language option.

With MS office XP Word and selecting Tamildriver and selecting Latha font and usingEkalappai you can create a Tamil Unicodedocument. Using Publisher 2003 you can create aWeb page. Of course you can cut and paste into aBlog page.

You can enter in Tamil into the text boxes ofYahoo mail and Hotmail as well. The mostimportant thing to do is to make sure that youhave the Internet options set with Thenee UNIXfont and Tamil language selected. If you don't doit right then things won't be right.
Now you can input in Unicode Tamil in both Win 98and XP systems. Thanks to Ekalappai, (Keymanmodule) and Ledlineit we have the ability toinput in Unicode Tamil.' -(in Tamil dotNet mailing list in March 2004)

Tamil Fonts, Keyboards andBeyond

Dr. M.Anandakrishnan
Vice-Chairman, TamilnaduState Council For Higher Education,
Lady Willington College Campus, Kamarajar Salai,Chennai 600 005 at Tamil Internet 2000,Directions to the Digital World, Singapore 22-24July 2000

Preface

The talent, interest and energy in TamilComputing are widely scattered around the world.For nearly two decades, the expertise andenthusiasm of this community were reflected asindividual efforts mainly engaged in developmentof fonts and keyboard drivers.

The fast changes in the computing environmentand worldwide proliferation of Internet usagehave widened the base of interest in TamilComputing and Internet applications. In thisevolution, the first Tamilnet'97 Conference in Singaporeidentified the key issues and outlined the scopefor further intensive efforts. The secondConference, Tamilnet'99 held in Chennai providedthe basis for evolving common schemes for Tamilfont encoding and Tamil keyboardconfiguration.

Since then, there has been a sharp increase inhe level of activities in development of productsand initiating efforts in new directionsresponding to the rapid advances in informationtechnology. Current momentum includes, attentionto operating systems, OCR, Text to Voice, TamilBrowsers, remote communication, printers, fontand Tamil menus, dynamic fonts, Tamil e-mail,Tamil Domain Names, Tamil Virtual libraries,Web-based Tamil Courses and so on. This paperpresents an overview of the efforts in TamilNadu.

Introduction
Since the early eighties, when personalcomputers became available extensively, a numberof persons with deep interest in Tamil begandevelopment of Tamil fonts for use in thecomputers. A large number of Tamil fonts werecreated as glyphs allocating the upper half ofthe 8 bit ASCII Table. Individual font developersassigned different code positions to differentcharacters and modifiers.

Since most of these initial developments werein

Tamil Unicode Converter For Mac