Takhti allows you to enter Hindi text (Devanagri Unicode) on
Windows systems. It was written mainly to
ease typing in Hindi in XP (the
INSCRIPT keyboard is not easy to use for Qwerty literates),
but then it was
realized that most people
in India use Win9X and cannot access their own
language because
no method on inputting text is available. A lot of effort
was made to make
it run on the 8-bit Win9X systems.
It is meant mainly for email usage, and presently word processing
features are not working fully. Unlike other programs, you can print,
save and copy-paste ....
On Win9X it shows up Devanagri only in one size, and that will be looked into
only if
users demand it. It has something to do with font linking,
documentation on which is scarce.
Takhti was written as a technological demonstrator
– to show that it is
possible to easily write in hindi in a standard text format, just like
ascii.
Howto: (also - FAQ)
To type in Hindi, you must have the program, a Unicode compatible font,
the required level of system upgrades (Richedit version 3.0 or above,
IE
5 or above).
You can switch between ascii and Unicode Hindi mode by the
Cntrl Q
or the toolbar button.
Fonts etc: (Unable to see hindi page)
To set the font for a
particular (unicode) script, go to
Tools->Internet Options->General
Tab->fonts->
(select Devanagri)Language script
(select favourite
font) Web page font
Still not able to see:
set
view->encoding->utf-8 manually
(some servers, like google, yahoo
groups etc might incorrectly
change encoding to ISO-8859 )
Note: It is advised to use the BBC Raghu8 font (Raghu1.ttf).
However on
Win9X, Takhti does not work with BBC's font,
and you have to use the
Raghindi font (Raghu.ttf)
On WinNT/2000/XP it is advised to use the BBC's
font.
Win2000 and XP may also have the Microsoft's (non-redistributable)
Mangal font.
Conjuncts ("half characters"):
Use the halant character x to
compose.
eg, type ptxr and see what it shows.
Email:
Takhti now supports email from within (File->send as
Text) (Outlook express only).
Otherwise,
Copy and paste the
text from Takhti to Outlook Express using Cntrl-C
and Cntrl-V...
To send
your mail as unicode text, set message encoding as UTF-8 .
(The receiving
party has to have a Unicode compatible Devanagri Font).
To set UTF-8, Tools->Options->Send->International Settings
Posting to Usenet:
To post news messages (NNTP) usually you
can only post through your
ISP's news server or via google groups.
Takhti now supports posting to usenet via the mail2news
(File->Post text to usenet) (Outlook express only).
Otherwise,
The easiest way is to use the mail2news daemon . Be
sure to set the message
encoding to UTF-8 (and plain text format )
send
your post to -
mail2news_nospam-YYYYMMDD-group1+group2...@anon.lcs.mit.edu
using today's date.
eg,
mail2news_nospam-20020425-alt.language.hindi+soc.culture.indian@anon.lcs.mit.edu
Update: Sept 6 2003:
you can get an account to post directly to usenet from http://news.individual.net/
a newsreader which posts correctly in Hindi (ie generally in Unicode) at 40titude
make sure you are sending in plain text
Reading Usenet groups:
you can use a public access server
to read if your ISP does not
provide an NNTP server. eg,
newscache0.freenet.de keeps
alt.language.hindi . To setup Outlook
Express to read from this server,
follow Tools->Accounts->add->news
and create the account.
if you are unable to access this way, you can read on an http gateway
like google, click on groups tab and search on the group
alt.language.hindi
HTML Pages:
Type the text in Takhti . Open Netscape Composer (or
other HTML editor),
set the view->character set to utf-8 , and copy paste
the text into the
HTML editor.
Chalo ab kaam ki baat:
Download the
Takhti program for Win9x(Win95,Win98,WinME)
and for NT4,Win2000,WinXP
Dowload the Richedit version for your operating system here.
(WinME/Win2000 and above have the correct version).
Since it is a big
download, people with bandwidth problems
can run takhti rightaway- if it
can't find the right version, it'll complain.
Raghindi font here.
To install the font Start->settings>Control
Panel->Fonts->File->Install new font
Or you may install the self-installing exe from BBC's Hindi site here
Note - BBC's font has some bug
and does not show up properly on Win9X.
Or maybe Microsoft has the bug. Who
knows? This is not well documented.
And of course, this is completely free software.You may not sell it and or
claim ownership.
You are free to distribute it and use it.
It comes
without any warrantees, implied or otherwise or suitability for any purpose.
Test (Excerpts from the yoga sutra)
९. शब्द
ज्ञानानुपाती वस्तु शून्यो विकल्पः ॥
Instaling the program:
Just unzip the all the files to any folder,
install the font in the zip file, and
try running the program.
Details:
Keyboard layout can be seen Options->Show Keyboard.
To print it, Alt+PrintScreen, paste in Microsoft Paint, and print it.
Newbies (or ascii accustomed )should understand the halant character x
. It is the vowel killer -
Unicode does not have codes for all the 600 odd
ligatures required by Hindi. The
ligatures are stored in the fonts , and are
chosen according to language rules.
eg, to type the word Pradesh in
Takhti, you would write pxrdeS . The pxr is actually
3 unicode
characters internally , but when displayed, the p and r are joined into a
ligature
thanks to the halant, and the glyph corresponding to it is
displayed from the font. If the font
does not have the ligature for it, it
would show as 3 different characters.
The following are called Akhand ligatures.
the character gya in gyaan can be input by jxM
the character ksha
can be input by kxQ
the character shra can be input by Sxr
Similarly for hri in words like hriday etc (type hxr )
Changes:2 Oct 2002
Page breaks now supported (format -> Page Break)
Limit of text the control can hold is increased for reasonable use
Infinite loop bug printing fixed
Default format now shows up as RTF rather than text....
Nukta is now one key <
Nukta characters are removed - they were taking too many keys. To type ख़बर type K<br
some new characters are added like Chandra ,Stress Udatta, stress anudatta, grave accent, acute acent (these are not used much in Hindi, but may be useful in Sanskrit )
Changes: (2 Mar 2003)
find replace support
you can send text mail and usenet post (via mail2news) directly from takhti
auto font switiching implemented when toggling unicode to ascii mode
use cntrl Q to switch ascii to unicode . Toolbar button also does same thing.
ZWJ and ZWNJ are now mapped to - and _ respectively
eg, with ZWJ भक्ति with ZWNJ भक्ति,
without any of these, भक्ति
Changes:(28 Mar 2003)
BBC's Raghu8 font is now used in NT version to avoid unicode-ascii font switching problems. For XP it is recommended to change the font to Mangal
Post to usenet supported via mail2news from within program (Outlook express only)
sending message as email (text) supported from within program (Outlook express only)
Changes:(6 Sept 2003)
unicode compatible newsreader to allow posting at 40titude (you can copy paste from takhti to this program)
Sample Hindi Texts:
Rishi Narad's Bhakti sutras
Rishi Patanjali's Yog Sutras
Author's Hindi Blog
For feedback contact the author