Editing UNICODE documents with Baraha Direct

Windows/Windows XP provide the INSCRIPT keyboard for editing UNICODE documents in Indian language. Using INSCRIPT keyboard is un-friendly and confusing for Baraha users. With Baraha Direct, you can avoid the usage of INSCRIPT keyboard altogether. Instead, you can use the Baraha's user-friendly transliteration keyboard. Baraha Direct allows you to type Indian language UNICODE text wherever INSCRIPT keyboard allows you to do so.

In Windows XP and Windows 2000, you should first enable the Indian languages before you can use Indian language UNICODE. You can enable the Indian language support using Control Panel --> Regional Options applet.

UNICODE is a 16 bit data encoding system that only the recent operating systems and applications support. Baraha Direct allows you to type UNICODE characters directly into any Windows application that supports UNICODE. If you select UNICODE output in Baraha Direct, then it will send UNICODE codes to the target application. If the target application support UNICODE, it will automatically display the Indian language text. If the target application doesn't support UNICODE, then it will display the junk characters.

If you are not able to use UNICODE, it means either your operating system or the target application does not support it. Before you use UNICODE output format in Baraha Direct, make sure the following two conditions are satisfied. If either of these conditions is not met, you will see 'square box' or 'question mark' characters instead of valid text.

1) You must be using an Operating System that supports Indian language UNICODE. See: Indian language UNICODE support in Windows operating systems.

2) The target application must support UNICODE input. Though the operating system supports UNICODE, it is possible that the  applications running in it, may not support UNICODE. Some of the applications that support UNICODE input are: MS Office XP, Notepad, Wordpad.

Using Baraha Direct with Notepad

In the following discussions we have used Notepad as an example. The same concepts are applicable to any other editor, word processors that support UNICODE, such as Wordpad, MS Office XP suite.

Notepad is a simple editor program that comes with all Windows operating systems. The Notepad program that comes with Windows 2000 and Windows XP support UNICODE and hence can be used to edit Indian language UNICODE documents using Baraha Direct.

Editing Indian language Text

• Start Baraha Direct. In the Baraha Direct, select the desired Indian language and select UNICODE as the Output Format.

• Start the Notepad program. You can access this program by clicking Start --> Programs --> Accessories --> Notepad link.

• Start typing in the Notepad. Depending on the Indian Language you selected, either Kannada or Devanagari text will appear automatically in the Notepad window.

• All the functionality of Notepad such as Print, Find, Replace works for Indian languages also.

Editing English Text

To type an English word in-between, de-activate Baraha Direct (press F11) and type the English word. To type Indian language words, activate Baraha Direct (press F11) again.

Fonts

When you edit Indian language UNICODE text in any editor, you should not select the TrueType fons such as BRH Kannada, BRH Kailasam, BRH Devanagari etc. These fonts should only be used for the ANSI text. These fonts can't be used for UNICODE text. For the UNICODE text, the program automatically selects a default font based on the script. If you are typing Kannada text, Tunga font is selected by default. If you are typing Devanagari text, Mangal font is selected by default. Tunga and Mangal fonts ship with the Windows XP operating system itself. If more than one UNICODE font is available for a given script, and the application permits you to choose font, then you can use the UNICODE font of your choice.

Saving

While saving the document, you should select UNICODE, UNICODE big endian or UTF-8 as the Encoding in the Save As dialog box. You can also give a Kannada or Hindi name for the document by typing the same into the File Name control. Infact, when Baraha Direct is ON, you can type Indian text into any control in the system dialog boxes.

Using Arial UNICODE MS in MS Word

The Tunga font has only Kannada characters. Similarly, the Mangal font has only Devanagari characters. But, Arial UNICODE MS font (that comes with Office 2000) has characters from various scripts including Kannada and Devanagari. It is found that in some cases when you are using Tunga or Mangal fonts in Notepad, Wordpad, MS Office XP applications, you see 'square box' characters instead of Indian language characters. This may be due to above applications not recognising the Tunga & Mangal fonts properly. But if you use the Arial UNICODE MS font instead, you will get the proper output. The following steps shows how to use Arial UNICODE MS font in the MS Office XP applications.