Typing In Indian Languages on a PC

Ever since computer revolution, it has remained a difficult task for people to use computers in their own languages. Particularly for Indian Languages which have very complex scripts and have very huge character sets. Chinese and Japanese languages are also like that but a lot of effort has been put by people to get those languages used on computers.

I was very deeply involved in finding a way to make true digital documents in any of the Indian Languages. And in time (about two years) I slowly learnt how to do it and ever since that, I tried to communicate that to a lot of people around the world. I don't know how well those instructions helped other people, but I am putting my best efforts.

Description is for Windows XP PCs only. No Linuxes. Other versions of Windows users can also follow this but terms might differ a bit.

This particular description is for Windows XP Pro. So, others might find different terminologies but they should be similar and easy to find out.

(1) Make sure that 'Supplemental Language Support' is turned ON for complex scripts. For this go to 'Control Panel' and click on 'Regional and Language Options'. On the dialog box go to 'Languages' tab and check the box 'Install files for complex scripts and right-to-left languages (including Thai)'. This will install necessary files. Depending on your OS installation it might ask you for your XP installation CD. Otherwise it will install files from the setup files' store. But DO NOT check the box 'East Asian Languages'. This is for Chineese and Japanese and such fonts. This creates problems with indian language fonts (I don't know why? but it might work fine on your system. so risk is with you).

(2) Find the 'Language Bar' on windows 'Task Bar'. Windows 'Task Bar' is the one that has the button 'Start' on it and is present at the bottom of the screen . 'Language Bar' should appear as shown in . If you DO NOT see this, right click anywhere on the 'Task Bar' go to Toolbars and CHECK the Language Bar option.

(3) Now if you Left Click on the Language Bar you will see all the languages that are ready to be typed by your computer. If you want to add more languages for your keyboard, RIGHT CLICK on the Language Bar and click on Settings. You will get a 'Text Services and Input Languages' dialog box . On the Settings tab you can add any of the languages you want by clicking on the 'ADD' button and selecting the language you want from the 'Input Language' combo box.

(4) Add as many languages as you want and clik OK on the dialog boxes and close them. This will install those languages' input modes for your keyboard.

(5) Now again Left Click on the Language Bar to see the languages that you have added. So, HOW TO TYPE? (See Below).

(6) Open MS-Word and before typing in the language you want, Left Click on the Language Bar and select the language you want to type in.

(7) That's it, you are ready to type in your language. You can type in this way not just using MS-Word but using any other Word Processor or Text Pad like Notepad, etc.

(8) Keyboard layout is the most confusing part in the whole process. Because, you need to know which key on the keyboard is for which letter. Also REMEMBER that all keys on a normal keyboard are not sufficient to include all the characters of Indian Languages. So key combinations will be used. But out of all this confusion, to make life a bit easier, I developed a software using which you can have on-screen keyboard layouts for almost all of the Indian Languages. Please follow this link to know more about this software.

Name of this software is 'Talapatram'. Using this software you can type in Bengali, Farsi, English, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. You can type text in mix-n-match combination of any of these languages you like. Full details about 'Talapatram' can be had from its website.

For samples of pages that I have created in this procedure, see my Topic Of Month pages. E.g. Shri Sai Satcharitram (chapter 1) - Telugu, Sri Saibaba Prayer - Hindi.

Have Fun.

V Rama Aravind
2007-02-13.