BHASHA IME

(Free software)

User Reference
Version 7.1.2
http://sites.google.com/site/bhashaime/
Send feedback and update notification request to
[email protected]
Author : Venkatesh

Table of Contents
Overview...........................................................................................................................................................................3
Phonetic Input Scheme..................................................................................................................................................5
Devanagari/Grantha............................................................................................................................................5
Infrequent Input (Devanagari, Grantha, Kannada (GodaGr font), Telugu (Pothana2000Vedic).....5
Vedic Input - Devanagari, Grantha, Kannada (GodaGr Font), Telugu (Pothana2000Vedic)............5
PUA symbols in Siddhanta Font (Vedic mode only)...................................................................................6
Support for Alternate forms of svara representation.................................................................................6
Kannada/Malayalam/Telugu.............................................................................................................................7
Tamil.......................................................................................................................................................................7
Devanagari symbols with non-Devanagari (Kannada/Telugu etc.)........................................................7
IAST/ISO 15919....................................................................................................................................................8
IAST and ISO15959 in Upper Case..................................................................................................................8
ZWJ, ZWNJ, and ZWS (for all scripts)...........................................................................................................8
Auxiliary features (for all scripts)..............................................................................................................................9
Transliteration...............................................................................................................................................................10
OCR Training.................................................................................................................................................................11
Configuring Windows.................................................................................................................................................11
Configuring Applications...........................................................................................................................................11

Overview
The IME helps creation of Unicode text content in Devanagari , e-Grantha, Kannada, Malayalam,
Telugu, Tamil, and Roman (IAST/ISO15919) scripts; Vedic input in Devanagari and e-Grantha
inclusive. Besides, the IME also supports transcription of Unicode-to-Unicode and Non-Unicode-toUnicode.

Platform: Windows XP SP3 (developed & tested), Win7 and Vista

Target Applications: All Windows applications in general; Openoffice, LibreOffice, Microsoft office
suite, IE, Firefox, Chrome , NotePad, WordPad for eg.

Text Input Scheme: Phonetic (default), and INSCRIPT (menu selectable)

Unicode Support: Subset of Ver 6.3

Script Support: Devanagari, e-Grantha, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Roman with
Diacritics ( IAST and ISO15919)

Installation: The application is portable. No installation required; just run the exe.

Usage: Run the exe. The IME shows an empty icon in the system tray. Open/switch-to the target
application, left/right-click the icon, and choose a script from the pop-up menu. The icon will change
to reflect the selected script. You could also choose the desired script using the short-cut indicated in
the system tray menu instead. You can start typing in the application. The IME can be turned on/off
from the menu/shortcut.

Document Tracking: The IME tracks each open doc/window and associated script. Switching to a
doc/window will cause IME to automatically switch to the last used script in the doc/window. (Of
course, each doc could have text in multiple scripts).

Fonts: Any Unicode complaint font for classical texts. For Vedic texts, Siddhanta (Devanagari) and eGrantha (Grantha) are most suited. For Roman with Diacritics, any font which supports it (eg.
DejaVu, Linux Libertine, Gentium Plus).

Phonetic Input Scheme

+ESC means pressing Escape key after the preceding keys. (Omit '+' )

Devanagari/Grantha
a aa/A

ii/I

=E

ai

= = O

ch

jh

D Dh

th

dh

bh

shh/Sh

u uu/U R RR

kh

gh

Th

ph
sh/S

LL

x =

eg. = = = == shriimaan veGkaTanaathaaryaH

=z

=.

au

= ..

=om+ESC

Devanagari only

Infrequent Input (Devanagari, Grantha, Kannada (GodaGr font), Telugu

(Pothana2000Vedic)
/ = gm+ESC

/ = gg+ESC

= y+w

= v+w

= l+w

(upadhmaniya) = HH (alternately, H + ESC)

(jihvamuliya) = HHH (alternately, H + ESC + ESC)
(anunasika) = w

Vedic Input - Devanagari, Grantha, Kannada (GodaGr Font), Telugu

(Pothana2000Vedic)
Switch to Vedic Mode by pressing the two SHIFT keys simultaneously. The Tray Icon will
change to indicate Vedic Mode. Press the SHIFT keys again to revert to classic (non-Vedic) mode.
(svarita) = ' (single quote)

(anudatta) = / (forward slash)

(dirgha svarita) = ' + ' (2 successive quotes) or " (a double quote)

The GodaGr font supports Taittiriya and Sama Svaras using Graphite Technology. See the font
document for more details.
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PUA symbols in Siddhanta Font (Vedic mode)

(visarga) = Alt+Ctl+Shift+h
(svarita) = Alt+Ctl+' (quote)

(dirgha svarita) = ' + ' (2 quotes) or " (a double quote) or

Alt+Ctl+'' (2 quotes) or
Alt+Ctl+Shift+" (a double quote)

(long top bar) = Alt+Ctl++ (plus) (short) = Alt+Ctl+- (hyphen)

(mini) = Alt+Ctl+Shift+- (hyphen)

Support for Alternate forms of svara representation

Siddhanta font presents svarita and dirgha-svarita in a syllable with leading non-base consonant Ra
('reph' in Opentype terminology), above the 'reph' form (, =) . It may be desirable to have the svara
along side the reph, for more clarity. This can be effected by pressing ESC following the original
form.
Also every successive ESC increases the distance between the 'reph' and the svara.
Be mindful that the new form uses codepoints from PUA rather than the Unicode-defined.

+ ESC =>

+ ESC =>

+ ESC =>

+ ESC =>

Kannada/Malayalam/Telugu
a aa/A

ii/I

uu/U

RR

kh

gh

Th

ph
y

LL

ee/E

ai

ch

jh

Dh

th

dh

bh

shh/Sh

sh/S

oo/O au

// = x

Tamil
a

aa/A

ii/I

uu/U

ee/E

ai

L/x =

R/(r + ESC)

n + ESC

oo/O

au

M
J
n

sh/S

shh/Sh

Devanagari symbols with non-Devanagari (Kannada/Telugu etc.)

(danda) = Alt+Ctl+.

(double danda) = Alt+Ctl+..

IAST/ISO 15919
a aa/A

ii/I

u uu/U R RR

kh

g gh

ch

jh

Th

D Dh

th

dh

ph

b bh

shh/Sh

sh/S

(Tamil ) = H + ESC
IAST only
ISO only

LL = E/e e/ee/E ai

= O/o o/oo/O au M H

/ (//) = x

(Tamil ) = z/Z

(Tamil ) = r + ESC

(Tamil ) = n + ESC

IAST and ISO15959 in Upper Case

To type in upper case, keep the CAPS LOCK key on.
Also there is help for occasional change of case (as in beginning of a sentence). IME supports change
of case for the last typed character with Shift+ESC key-combo.
a + Shift +ESC = A

+ Shift + ESC =

+ Shift + ESC =

and so on ...

ZWJ, ZWNJ, and ZWS (for all scripts)

ZWJ == Shift+Space

ZWNJ == Alt+Ctl+Space

ZWS == Alt+Ctl+Shift+Space

Auxiliary features (for all scripts)

To make typing syllables like (), () more intuitive, the IME converts the () to
() and () respectively when followed by / varga or / varga. Thus the above
syllables can be typed as 'mga' and 'mca' instead of Gga and Jca.

The above conversion however can be avoided for the syllable by pressing ESC key after m.
Thus 'mESCga' would result in ()

Key combos like 'aa', 'ii', 'uu', 'ai', 'au', 'kh', 'ch', ... can be broken by keying an ESC between
the keys. Thus, while key sequence 'aa' would result in , aESCa would be . Similarly,
'iESCi' would be , 'kESCh' would be .

In Devanagari and Grantha, the period key (.) obtains the danda char (). To obtain the period
char (.), type period key (.) followed by the ESC key. ( + ESC -> .)

In Tamil, ////////////

followed by ESC key results in

//////////// . The feature works both ways

(ie. /... + ESC ---> /...)

Also, in Tamil, and can be muted with the ESC key, just as above.

'q' works as an alternate for ESC key, useful with applications like GMail which block ESC;
also, just in case it's more comfortable.

'f' is used only for OCR training (detailed below) and generally useless for normal text entry.

To manifest phonetic operation, the IME depends on being able to keep track of keys typed so
far. Moving the cursor away from an incomplete syllable (except backspacing), (using arrow
keys, page-up/page-down/mouse-click etc.,) would make IME loose track and start a new
syllable.

Transliteration
The IME provides for transliteration from/to a few scripting schemes.

Text transactions for all transliterations are done via the clipboard. (Copy the source text into
the clipboard, transliterate, paste the transliterated text from the clipboard to the target
window).

Any Unicode script can be converted to

Devanagari/Grantha/Kannada/Malayalam/Tamil/Telugu/Roman Diacritics by invoking
TrayIcon->Transliterate-> Uni Any -> target script

Uni->Tml converts / to . , though a valid Unicode character, is supported only in

some Tamil fonts. (Arial Unicode MS on Win XP SP2 does not have it). In that case, the
converted text will show empty boxes. Use Uni->Tml2 instead, to convert / to

e-Grantha-> Dev Uni will not work for Vedic characters

'Maharshi -> Uni Dev' is meant to convert texts extracted from Pdf files in the Maharishi site.
The text from the pdf files are best extracted using "PDF Xchange Viewer", freely available at
(http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer). Adobe's reader, Foxit
Reader etc., may not extract the text content properly.

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OCR Training
Training OCR software (eg. Tesseract) requires the characters like

, etc., (in Tamil) to be

typed . The chars can be obtained by typing , , etc., followed by 'f'.

OCR char

Keys

aaf

if

iif

uf

uuf

ef

eef

aif

of

oof

\f

auf

Configuring Windows
To enable support for Bharatiya scripts in Windows XP,
Go to 'Control panel', and click on 'Regional and language options'
Go to 'Languages' Tab
Check select 'Install Files for complex script and right-to-left languages [including Thai]'
Press OK

Configuring Applications
Some applications need to be tune-configured for IME to work with them.
LibreOffice

Go to 'Tools'->'AutoCorrect Options'->'Word Completion'

Uncheck 'Enable Word Completion' and 'Collect Words'

Microsoft Office 2003

Go to Start->All Programs->Microsoft Office->Microsoft Office Tools->Microsoft Office 2003

Language Settings

In 'Enabled Languages' Tab, choose 'Indic' from 'Available languages' combo

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Select all scripts you need from the list below and Press 'Add >>' button

Press OK

Microsoft Office Word 2003

Go to 'Tools'->'Options'->'Edit'

Uncheck 'Smart cut and paste'

Press OK

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