Vishva Kannada -

Transliterating from Kannada into Hindi

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 07:22:20 -0800

Q: Is it possible to transliterate from Kannada into Hindi? I have the data in Microsoft Word 2003 doc file.

A: Surprisingly the answer is YES. Many people are not aware of this little feature built into Microsoft Word 2003. The steps are like this -

How do I enable Indic on Windows XP?

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:02:24 -0800

Q: I downloaded and installed the Kannada IME from Bhasha India web-site. Still I don't get Kannada properly in Windows XP. I see blank squares when I type using the Kannada IME. Why?

A: The Bhasha India IME will add additional keyboard layouts also known as Input Method Editor (IME) only.

Indic on Windows mobile and PDAs

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 06:29:25 -0700

Q: I tyied to copy a opentype font into the windows mobile, and it can not show the characters corrently. Is there any solution such as "ups10.dll", a special dll for windows mobile?

A: The answer is big NO. Just by copying the opentype font into the device will make to display the text shown without the proper rendering (glyph substitution, glyph positioning etc. are not done). WinCE 5.0 itself has introduced the fecility to have internationalization including the rendering of opentype fonts. I had built a mobile device platform using the WinCE 5.0 SDK long ago. I also developed a multilingual notepad -English, Hindi and Kannada - employing Visual Studio .NET Compact Framework, way back in 2004 itself. But none of the devices available in the market allow me to replace their OS by the one built by me. They neither include the components required for rendering the opentype font also. I have sent emails to HTC, the largest manufacturer of Windows Mobile devices requesting them to include these compnents. My email was not replied at all. I have repeatedly requested Microsoft India to take up the issue with device manufacturers like HP, HTC, etc. They also did not bother. This is the situation.

Oriya in Windows

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 08:40:32 -0800

Q. How can I get Oriya in Windows?

A. Windows XP does not have support for Oriya. That has been included in Windows Vista. The opentype font used for Oriya is called Kalinga. Vista has the Oriya locale also. One can have date, time, currency in Oriya. One can also have the files with names typed in Oriya. Windows explorer will properly sort the files as per Oriya sorting order. Shown below are two screenshots -one from Notepad and another from Word 2007.

From font to data

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 22:34:25 -0800

Journey of Kannada on computers

-Dr U B Pavanaja

A journey of thousand miles starts with a single step –so says a proverb. Usage of Kannada on computers, like all other Indian languages, started with printing and publishing, popularly known as Desktop Top Publishing (DTP). The biggest challenge on those days was to display and print the characters of our languages.

It was our own Kannadiga, K P Rao, who for the first time started designing fonts for Indian languages, including Kannada. He also created an inputting mechanism for feeding Indic characters into computers. Indian languages are highly scientific in nature. K P Rao utilized this fact and devised the first phonetic keyboard driver for Indian languages. Later on he released a free software for Kannada called Sediyapu.

Then came so many DTP packages for Indian languages. All these were nothing but collection of fonts and keyboard drivers. Every vendor used his own proprietary encoding scheme leading to a sort of chaos. Files created using a particular vendor’s font was not readable using another vendor’s font. There was lack of standardization.

Govt of Karnataka (GoK) took the initiative in standardizing Kannada on computers. It constituted a committee. As per the recommendations of the committee it notified the standard font for Kannada and a keyboard layout (2001). This layout is nothing but slightly modified layout of K P Rao. GoK also released a free software by name Nudi adhering to the standards.

Kannada is not far behind in entering the information super highway (Internet). Vishva Kannada (www.vishvakannada.com) is the first ever web-site as well as online magazine in Kannada. Those days people who put up Indic web-sites were giving fonts for download whish has to be installed in the PCs to browse the web-sites. Then came the dynamic font technology wherein the font stays on the server and there is no need to download and install the font. Vishva Kannada is the first Indian language web-site to use dynamic fonts (1998).

In the area of education and using IT, Kannada has made a mark. GoK’s Mahiti Sindhu program and Azim Premji Foundation’s computer aided educations are good examples here. Teaching the programming logic in Kannada and thereby developing programming skills is another important aspect which can be implemented by using Kannada version of LOGO program which is available at vishvakannada.com/KannadaLogo. This is first ever Indian language version of world famous programming language for children –LOGO. Kannada Logo has been blessed with Manthan Award.

It was very cumbersome and next to impossible to create applications in Kannada like salary bill generation using the font and keyboard driver technology. The operating systems do not understand these fonts. This problem is now vanished with the advent of global standard called Unicode. Unicode removes the need for a font standard. Since the operating systems can now understand the data as Kannada, it is possible to sort as per Kannada sorting order and create database applications. These are made possible by the availability of Kannada Unicode enabled OS (Windows XP), Office suite, database and development tool (VS.NET) by Microsoft. The famous Bhumi software of GoK, Ration card application created by Comat Technologies for GoK are some pioneering examples of Kannada applications.

Preventing unwanted vattus in Kannada

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 02:32:19 -0700

Q: How can I prevent the next consonant from not becoming a vattu for the previous consonant? For ex, I do not want ಬಿಲ್ and ಗಳನ್ನು join and form ಬಿಲ್ಗಳನ್ನು. But I do not want a space in between also.

Pasting Unicode text into Excel

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:38:15 -0700

Q: I was trying to copy and paste Kannada text from a web-site into Excel 2003 spreadsheet. The data is generated using a VS.NET 2003 application in the form of a grid. But the data when pasted appeared as question marks. How to solve this problem?

Language Impediments to E-Governance - Problems and Solutions -II

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 07:20:14 -0800

Part-II: The Solution

- Dr U B Pavanaja

Introduction

In Part-I of this article we have seen how hacked proprietary font based solutions hampered the growth of Indian language solutions on computers. All these solutions added a layer to the Operating System (OS) and did not gel well with the OS. All over the world computer users have started adapting the 16-bit data-encoding standard called Unicode. Systems that have in-built support for Unicode at the OS level need not have an added layer for Indic support.

Language Impediments to E-Governance - Problems and Solutions - I

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 23:29:55 -0800

Part-I: Problem definition

- Dr U B Pavanaja

Introduction

So much has been written about the digital divide in India. People have talked tirelessly about the need of taking the benefits of Information Technology (IT) for common man. No one is going to question the validity of the statement “IT for common man has to be in his language”. Many state governments and the central government of India are spending lot of money towards E-Governance. Let us consider the problems and their solutions in implementing the E-Governance projects in India.

Kannada on Mac OS

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 07:25:25 -0800

Q: I want to use Kannada employing Unicode in Mac OS. How do I do?

A: Nicholas Shanks Has put up a detailed page on the topic. Please visit that. Kannadigas should be thankful to Nicholas Shanks for this.

Sending email in Kannada Unicode

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 06:32:50 -0800

Q: I have Win XP and Office 2003. Please tell me how do I send email in Kannada Unicode using Gmail or Yahoo employing Baraha?

A: Since you already have Win XP, you need not use Baraha for typing in Kannada Unicode. Win XP has built-in keyboard layout for Kannada. You need to just enable that. Please read the tutorials on enabling and typing in Indian languages. The method is the same for Kannada. The built-in keyboard layout of Win XP is Inscript. If you want to use additional layouts, you can download the IME from BhashaIndia web-site. This IME will give you KGP (Karnataka Govt Prescribed), typewriter and English transliteration layouts. The last two are similar to what you get in Baraha. If you want you can also use Baraha Direct in Unicode mode. Next question is how to send email in Kannada Unicode. Use IE6. Set UTF-8 for encoding under View > Encoding. Select the Kannada keyboard layout and type in Kannada in Gmail or Yahoo. Send your email. The recipient must have Unicode enabled system to read your mail in Kannada. Gmail supports Kannada text in subject line also.

Kannada in Windows and Linux

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 03:00:08 -0800

Q: If I type in Kannada using Windows XP, can I open the file in Linux?

A: Yes. Provided you use Unicode and save the file in Unicode encoding. If you use Word for typing, better to save it as plain text or RTF file.

Languages supported by Windows

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 02:54:20 -0800

Q: What are the languages supported by Windows?

A: Windows 2000 supported Devanagari and Tamil scripts. Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi and Konkani use Devanagari script. Windows XP added Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati and Punjabi.

Problem in typing Kannada

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 02:50:34 -0800

Q: I am using Windows XP. I have enabled Indian languages and Kannada keyboard layout. But when I type mUrthy it appears as mArthy. Why?

A: This is a known issue. The problem is with the old Tunga font that was issued when Windows XP was initially released.

Indian language application development employing .NET and Unicode

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 07:49:16 -0800

by Dr U B Pavanaja

Adding multi-language capabilities other than English should be done from ground up. All the code that represents the language to the user (buttons, menus, prompts, help, text, dialog-boxes, etc.) must be found and altered to support language independence. This problem multiplies exponentially when you deal with applications that have hundreds of thousands lines of code, which have been created over the time and modified constantly by different developers. Hard-coding the language dependent text makes it extremely complex the process of adding multilingual capability for the program. One will have to develop individual application for every language he wants to support. Maintaining such a program is another headache.