Introduction
During the last five years there has been a phenomenal growth in the number of websites carrying materials in Tamil script. Unfortunately, in the absence of an established standard, each website uses a tamil font with its own encoding scheme. So one needs to have more than a dozen tamil fonts to be able to read all the tamil materials that are being presented in the WWW.
For over 18 months, many of the tamil lovers (tamil software developers, software professionals, webmasters of tamil websites, academics, tamil research scholars,.... interested to see a tamil standard established soon), joined together to examine various possible font encoding scheme in an email discussion forum called tamil.net. This community has now come up with one Tamil Standard Code for Information Interchange (TSCII) through the Internet. There is a dedicated website for the proposed Tamil Standard where you can get all the information about this standard and also implementation tools. Growing number of tamil font/software developers are providing various tools to implement the Tamil Standard in various computer platforms (OS).
In this page, we are pleased to provide a colleciton of web pointers that allows direct downloading of the TSCII-based tamil fonts, keyboard editors for text input, convertors to go from one of the existing encoding scheme to TSCII etc. Feel free to download the tools and test them in your computer.
Tools for Implementation of Tamil Standard in Different Computer OS /Platforms
- A. Tamil Font Faces and Keyboard Editors based on TSCII encoding scheme
- B. Text Convertors - to convert tamil texts prepared using current, popular tamil fonts to correspond to TSCII encoding
- C. Customized Email Softwares for use with TSCII based tamil fonts
- D. Online Webpage convertors - to convert Anjal/Inaimathi or Mylai font based webpages to one corresponding to TSCII encoding
- E. Guidelines for setting up Tamil webpages based on TSCII encoding
You can click on the name of the tool to download the tool directly.
I. TSCII Tools for use in Windows OS (3.x/95/98/NT)
| Keyboard Editors for Text input using TSCII-based fonts |
| Editor | Author | File name |
Keyman Editor
I :Program customised
II: config. files | Dr.Kumar Mallikarjunan
Mr.D. Sivaraj, both of USA | tsc.exe
keymaps.zip |
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| Anjal Editor
Text Editor-cum
Email software | Mr. Muthu Nedumaran
Murasu Systems, Malaysia | anjal201.exe |
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| | Cuvadi Text Editor | Mr. Elango Sambandam, Chicago, USA | Suvadi.zip |
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| Text Convertors to go between different Encoding Schemes |
| Software Description, Author | Filename |
Murasu Font Converter
A Convertor of texts from
Inaimathi/Murasu/Typewriter/Mylai formats
to TSCII standard
Author: Muthu Nedumaran of
Murusu DTP packages, Singapore/Kuala Lampur | MURASUFC.EXE
This program works as a plugin in the free Murasu Anjal and also as a stand-alone program.FCMATRIX.ZIP
Matrix files needed to convert with Murasu Font Converter of Muthu Nedumaran. This set includes a matrix file for TSCII-Tamil. Convertor files for Mylai and other formats are available at the TSCII website
Authors: Mr. D. Sivaraj and Dr. Kumar Mallikarjunan.
|
Cuvadi Tamil Text Editor
Author:Mr. Elango Sampandam, Chicago, USA
Provides conversion from Mylai/Inaimathi font formats to TSCII encoding. | Suvadi.zip
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Integrated Text Editor-cum-Email Softwares based on TSCII |
| Software Description, Author | Filename for download |
TMAIL 1.0
TMAIL 1.0 is a customized Tamil Text Editor-cum-Email software
Text input options: Phonetic and typewriter keyboards.
Displays all the menu options and Help files in Tamil too!
Author: Mr. Vasudevan of Kamban Softwares, Australia, Australia | TMAIL 1.0 |
Murasu Anjal 2.0
Anjal 2.0 is an integrated keyboard driver, convertor, editor and conversion matrix editor from Murasu Systems. See elsewhere on this page for more information. Also available in CD-ROM.
Author: Muthu Nedumaran | Murasu Anjal 2.0 |
II. TSCII Tools for use in Macintosh OS
III. Akaram Tamil Text Editor for use in Unix Platforms
Chinnasamy Nagarajan (Nagu) has developed a Tamil Text Editor that is freely downloadable.
Akaram Tamil Editor v0.6 Pongal Release is available from:
http://www.tamil.net/tscii/akaram.tar.Z
This release is primarily aimed at UNIX users. The features
supported are:
o Support for TSCII encoding
o Supports multiple Input Methods, such as:
- Anjal Transliteration Method
- Mylai Input Method
- Tamil Nadu Govt. proposed typewriter layout
- Tamil Nadu Govt. proposed phonetic layout
o Comes with TSCAkaram font and other TSCII based free fonts
o Facilities to work with multiple files at the same time
o Option to save files in HTML, Plain Text, Akaram Text formats
o Support to edit formatted text
o Provides Toolbar controls and option to hide/display them
o Provides Online Hyptertext Help
The source code of this software is available free for modifying and
distributing. Please see the section on License & Warranty in Help.html.
For further information, please refer to README.txt and Help.html.
This Release of Akaram is tested by:Mr. Sivaraj, Mr. Anbuman and Mr. Subramaniam.
Online Convertors to convert webpages to TSCII encoding
On-line Webpage Convertordeveloped by Mr. D. Sivaraj can be used to convert Anjal/Inaimathi and Mylai-based Webpages in Tamil to equivalent ones in TSCII Format.This program works as a CGI perl script. The converted webpage can be saved locally (save the "source" file) to put up the TSCII-based web-pages!
Tamil webpages based on TSCII-guidelines and sample pages
".pdf" (portable document format") files based on TSCII font
There is growing interest to use "pdf" files as the medium for distribution of formatted text materials in the internet. Tamil text materials (electronic texts, publicity brochures of commercial establishements,..) can be distributed using TSCII conformant fonts.
Here are some sample pdf files that you can download and see for yourself how the concept works. The font is embedded in the pdf file. Hence you should be able to read the tamil text therein directly on your computer (Mac or Unix) without the need to install the tamil font. Unfortunately on Windows, due to some bug in the Adobe pdf-writer that I used to generate the file (on a Power Mac), the embedded font does not show up. You need to install the TSC font first (font can be downloaded using the pointers given above) and then you can view the pdf file.
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