Please download the latest version of ILIT for your language:

Bengali Gujarati Hindi Kannada Malayalam Marathi Oriya Punjabi Tamil Telugu

Keep the feedback flowing. Thanks!

Rahul.

You can now use danda (।), double danda (॥) and abbreviation symbol (॰) in the Desktop version of ILIT. In the appropriate languages, typing a ‘.’ converts it to a danda (।) and two ‘.’s will get converted to a double danda (॥). In cases where it is possible that the ‘.’ is part of a decimal number or an IP address etc. ILIT gives the ‘.’ as the default option. For example, if you enter 123.456 the ‘.’ is left as it is and will not be converted to a danda (।). You can also get the abbreviation symbol (॰) by choosing from the list of options in the drop-down menu. For example, you can type words like ए॰आर॰के for writing names of people, in languages that support this character.

Punctuation support in the web version is a little different from that of the Desktop Version. In the web version, only danda (।) is supported and a ‘.’ will be converted to a danda (।) if it is followed by a space or another word-breaker character.

As part of this release, we have also added support for commonly used emoticons like :P, :D, :S, :O and other variations of these. The tool will leave these sequences as they are (without transliterating them) so that you can use emoticons in applications like Instant Messengers etc. Please note that you can also use emoticons such as :), :(, etc. (emoticons that do not have a letter or a number in them) as ILIT will not transliterate them anyway.

You can download any of the following languages by going to the ILIT home page:

Bengali Gujarati Hindi Kannada Malayalam Marathi Oriya Punjabi Tamil Telugu

Please do download and use the tool and send us your feedback. Thanks!

Vamsee

We offer two modes in which you may enable Indic Language Input on your website: the Opt-out mode and the Opt-in mode.

In the Opt-out mode, all supported input fields on the page are transliteration-enabled except those that you specifically wish to disable. This is recommended when you want most or all of your site to be transliteration-enabled, such as your intra-website search box and various form fields and comments boxes but not, say, a URL or email address field.

In the Opt-in mode, only those input fields are transliteration-enabled that you specify. This is recommended if you want only a few input fields on your site to be transliteration-enabled, such as, say, only a comments box and nothing else.

All it takes to do this is a very simple copy-paste of HTML code into your website or blog template, and possibly adding an attribute to the opening tag of some HTML controls. By making the right choice between Opt-in and Opt-out modes for your site, you can keep even this editing to a minimum. You do not have to write a single line of Javascript code yourself!

Separate instructions for adding the Web version of Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool to your website are available for each language:

Bengali  Hindi  Kannada  Malayalam  Tamil  Telugu

This service is provided free for non-commercial use only.

We're confident that this will help further the cause of creating more Indic language content. Feel free to send us your feedback. Thanks!

Rahul.

We have now added Rich Text Input support for Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, thereby making them fully supported browsers. Opera is still partially supported, so that only plain text input fields can be transliterated in.

If you have already added the Web version of Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool to your browser, you should see the change with immediate effect the next time you invoke it on a webpage. You will find that all kinds of text input fields can now be transliterated in on the fully supported browsers. No reinstallation of the bookmarklets is required.

If, however, you do not see the change, clear your browser cache and try again.

If you haven't yet added the Web version of Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool to your browser, head over to https://msn.co.in/ilit and give it a try.

Thanks!

Rahul.

In the Desktop version of Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool, this is made easy by the keyboard shortcuts for switching languages. Unless you have specifically changed this setting via the Control Panel, the left Alt+Shift (left Alt is the Alt key to the left of the spacebar) shortcut can be used to quickly switch languages without having to move the mouse to the Language Bar and click on another language.

Further, you can define your own shortcuts to switch to a particular language as follows (reproduced from the FAQs):

On Windows XP

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Regional and Language Options.
2. On the Languages tab, under Text services and input languages, click Details.
3. Under Preferences, click Key Settings to see/edit language bar keyboard shortcuts.

On Windows Vista/Windows 7

1. Click Start and go to Control Panel.
2. Click Change keyboards or other input methods under Clock, Language and Region.
3. On the Keyboards and Languages tab, click Change Keyboards.
4. Select the Advanced Key Settings tab to see/edit language bar keyboard shortcuts.

You may also prevent a word from being transliterated by either hitting Esc to dismiss the list of suggestions or by manually selecting the original English spelling from the list (it appears above the first option, so that you can press the Up arrow key to quickly select it).

In the Web version you may use the Ctrl+M keyboard shortcut to toggle transliteration or hold down the Shift key when you press Space or Enter at the end of a word to prevent just that word from being transliterated.

We hope you find these tips useful. As always, your feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Rahul.

Apart from easy-to-use free form transliteration, Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool accommodates experienced users who wish to be more specific by using capital letters. We also expect that with time, as new users get more proficient, they will find use for this feature, as it will help them more accurately transliterate with minimal spelling revisions.

In short, it allows users to enter a capital letter to specify a preference for a long vowel (e.g. bA for बा in Hindi or kE for கே in Tamil) or a hard consonant (e.g. De for डे in Hindi or Li for ளி in Tamil). For a guide on how to use this feature, refer to the links below for each language.

Bengali  Hindi  Kannada  Malayalam  Tamil  Telugu

Each link points to the pertinent questions in our FAQs section. Questions 5 through 9 go over the details of how to use capital letters with Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool.

The Whole Story

One of the most significant challenges we faced while developing the Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool was designing it to be useful for as many different kinds of users as possible.

Computing with and digitally publishing in Indian Languages has a long history. However, the users are, in general, made up of a niche of early adopters/advanced users and a rapidly growing group of new users.

The advanced users have been working with Indian Languages for several years - as professional publishers, writers and linguists, or just language enthusiasts. They have seen the days when the only way to enter Indic text was to learn and use a keyboard layout or a fixed transliteration scheme. Having learnt those layouts and schemes and gotten used to the speed and accuracy, they can settle for nothing less.

On the other hand, new users have only just started entering Indian language text into computers. To learn a keyboard layout or transliteration scheme could be a big barrier for them. Free form transliteration holds instant appeal for the new casual users because of the ability to spell out words naturally in English. By using free-form transliteration, we clearly made the product usable by new users. Yet, we wanted to help more experienced users to get to their word choices easily as well.

Enter capitalization based hinting.

The majority of the transliteration schemes in existence use capital letters to distinguish long vowels from short vowels and hard consonants from soft consonants. In classic free-form transliteration, this distinction is lost. For this reason, apart from free-form transliteration, Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool also allows users to be more specific by using capital letters. We also expect that with time, as new users get more proficient, they will find use for this feature, as it will help them more accurately transliterate with minimal spelling revisions.

In short, it allows users to enter a capital letter to specify a preference for a long vowel (e.g. bA for बा in Hindi or kE for கே in Tamil) or a hard consonant (e.g. De for डे in Hindi or Li for ளி in Tamil). For a guide on how to use this feature, refer to the links below for each language.

Bengali  Hindi  Kannada  Malayalam  Tamil  Telugu

Each link points to the pertinent questions in our FAQs section. Questions 5 through 9 go over the details of how to use capital letters with Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool.

We hope you find this feature useful. As always, we encourage you to leave comments below to let us know what you think.

Thanks!

Rahul.

Welcome to the Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool Blog. We intend this blog to be a place where we share information regarding the Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool. The posts on this blog will be written by people on the team that developed this product. We welcome you to provide feedback/suggestions in the comments section of this blog.

We developed this tool because we felt that for many languages (Indic Languages among them), entering text on a PC is difficult today. Though technology is improving and there are many innovative products out there today, most products have some barrier – e.g. some require users to know a fixed transliteration scheme; some others allow free form transliteration, but work only on webpages etc. We wanted to see if we can bring free form transliteration to the desktop such that it can be used to enter text in any application on the PC, and that is a key focus of the Indic Language Input Tool.

Currently we support six languages – Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. Please do use both the web version and the desktop version & provide us feedback. We hope this will contribute towards greater usage of Indian Languages in computing, and creation of more content/applications in these languages.

You can expect to see periodical posts on this blog providing tips on using the product and other topics pertinent to input of Indian Language Text on a computer.

Thank You!

Thiru