suzmccarth wrote:

> Well, now that I have seen this I will go to the Tamil community and
> say what are you using and why?

Yes, good idea.

> 1. There is a site which offers preset syllables, in Madras, I posted
> that. But it is not unicode.

Do you mean
<http://livingstone.vsb.bc.ca/multiliteracy/language_%20images/tamil-syllabl
e-chart.gif>?

That doesn't "offer preset syllables": it offers a table, taken from a book,
of all the combinations of consonant+matra(*). It has nothing to do with
computers or keyboards

I have similar table on my Tamil grammar, after the tables showing the
single letters and consonant signs.

There is at least a good reason why that table should be presented to
learners: some matras are irregular and change form depending on the base
letter they are applied to. Particularly, see the "uu" column (the one
marked with "see Chart II").

Beside that, I told you that I learned writing in Italian using a similar
matrix, and someone else told you that similar methods are (or were) used
also for Hebrew and English speaking children. But Italian, Hebrew and
English speaking literate adults do not type on "syllabic" keyboards.

(*: BTW, "matra" = "vowel sign"; Madras is the capital city of Tamil Nadu.)

> 2. There is the old 'linear Tamil' inherited from typewriter days and
> truetype fonts.

Which has nothing whatsoever to do with "syllabic" keyboards.

BTW, it is perfectly possible to implement typewriter-like input, if the
Tamil-speaking public requires it (which I doubt).

> 3. And there is this method "typing in plain English". and it does
> use unicode. It appears on my computer in the Tamil unicode font. Of
> course I have to test it and it won't work on win98 but it feels
> right to me.

Could the fact that it feels so right to you (and to me, I admit) have
something to do with the fact that your language (as well as mine) is
written with the Latin alphabet, that you do not have a Tamil keyboard (nor
do I), and that we don't have a working knowledge of the Tamil language?

> Now for what Tamil computing groups say, well I have to
> learn the name of this method, download it and so on. Don't ask me
> why it works, let's ask someone else.

Of course. While waiting for someone else's answer, I'll entertain myself
with a little "what if" game.

I'll imagine for a moment that Europe had been colonized by Tamil Nadu (of
course this occurred after the Indian states colonized America: Tamil is in
fact the majority language in most of the USA; apart Texas and other
southern states, where Hindi is more common because, like nearby Mexico and
most of "Hindustani America").

We Europeans obtained our independency just 50 years ago; although almost no
Europeans are native Tamil speakers, Tamil is still known by lots of
European as a second language, and it still plays an important role as the
continent's lingua franca (someone said that Tamil is "the petroleum of
Europe" because a basic knowledge of Tamil enables we Europeans to find jobs
in wealthy Indian-speaking countries such as America and India).

As Europe is economically so behind, most people here in Italy cannot afford
to buy a computer (let alone a computer localized for minority languages
such as Italian or German), so we have to rely on Internet cafés which,
normally, only have second hand Indian computers equipped with Tamil or
Hindi keyboards.

Now. If I want to send an e-mail in Italian to my grandma my options are:
(a) forget it, (b) wait till Latin keyboards will be commonly available in
Italy, (c) use a clever on-line Java script which enables me to "write
Italian in plain Tamil" and have it converted in my exotic Latin script.
What will be my choice?

_ Marco