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Tamil language keyboad input


Since I posted that Google searches in Tamil I had a few requests on how to input text in Tamil. Though I will illustrate with Tamil as the language you can add any other language like Hindi in the same way. I am using Windows XP SP2. The screen might look a bit different if you are still in SP1(BTW its time to get SP2). I think there is Tamil and Hindi support in Windows 2000 too but I have not tried it. I could be wrong. OK here are the steps.

Select the ‘Regional and Language Options‘ in the Control Panel.

Control Panel Option

Go to the ‘Languages‘ tab and press ‘Details‘. Make sure ‘Install files for complex script and right-to left languages (including Thai)‘ is checked.

Languages Tab

Press ‘Add‘ in the ‘Settings‘ tab to add a new language.

Input Languages

Now choose ‘Tamil‘ as the input language. Check ‘Keyboard layout/IME‘ and select ‘Tamil‘ as the keyboard language.

Select Tamil

Now press ‘OK‘ three times to save all the changes you made. Now you should see the ‘Language Bar‘ as show below. Here you can choose the language you want to type in on the fly. Now open Google change the language to Tamil and type away. If you are unaware of the Tamil keyboard layout you can open the on screen keyboard to help you. You can find it in Start>All Programs>Accessories>Accessibility>On-Screen Keyboard. Or alternatively you can type ‘oks‘ in the run dialog.

Tamil On Screen Keyboard

If you want to type phonetically you can download another keyboard layout from Bhasha India site. This lets you type in English and convert it into Tamil phonetically.

Related posts:

  1. Email in Tamil with Gmail
  2. Gesture based keyboard for Tamil
  3. Google searches in Tamil…
  4. Gmail in Hindi
  5. Firefox messes up Tamil

This entry was posted on September 9, 2004, 9:37 PM and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  1. #1 by KG on September 11, 2004 - 9:50 AM

    You can make it simple by downloading and using your free copy of Murasu Anjal ( http://www.murasu.com/downloads/ )

    Murasu supports live transliteration of Romanised tamil (eg: vaNakkam) to Unicode tamil. For example with murasu installed, as you type vasanth in Notepad(after hitting F12 key) it will be converted to ‘வசந்த்’.

    In fact , Murasu made it so easy that you can find quite a large number of tamil bloggers here ( http://tamilblogs.blogspot.com/ ) and why don’t u get your name here ( http://thamizarhal.blogspot.com/). It’s a directory of those blogging in English but have their roots in Tamilnadu.

    BTW, I’ve been reading your blog for quite some time. Very informative. Keep up the good work :-)

  2. #2 by Vasanth on September 11, 2004 - 10:14 AM

    KG,

    Murasu Anjal is very interesting. You should also check out the http://www.bhashaindia.com/ site. They have similar phoetic keyboard for Tamil. Since it is from Microsoft it is very well integrated into Windows.

  3. #3 by muthu on September 11, 2004 - 1:27 PM

    aaha! mikka mazhichi!
    tamizhilil blog seyyalaamae!
    muthu :)

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