Indian language UNICODE support in Windows operating systems

UNICODE is the encoding chosen by operating systems for supporting various other non-English languages on computers. Though UNICODE standard supports all the languages of the world, the operating systems such as Windows, Linux may not have implemented all the languages yet. The support for Indian languages was not available until Windows 2000 was released.

Baraha allows you to convert the Indian language text into UNICODE format in various manners as follows.

• You can copy the text in UNICODE format using Edit | Copy Special command.
• You can type UNICODE text directly into any applications that support UNICODE using Baraha Direct.
• You can save the Baraha documents as UNICODE text files using the File | Export command.
• You can save the Baraha documents as HTML files which use UTF-8 encoding using File | Export command.

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. If you are using an operating system that does not support the Indian language UNICODE, then you will not see UNICODE text properly. Instead you will see 'square box' or 'question mark' characters.

Devanagari, Tamil

• UNICODE for Devanagari, Tamil scripts is supported only in Windows 2000 and and later operating systems.

• Windows 2000/Windows XP uses an Open Type font "Mangal" to display Devanagari UNICODE text.

• Windows 2000/Windows XP uses an Open Type font "Latha" to display Tamil UNICODE text.

Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi

• UNICODE for Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati and Gurumukhi scripts is supported only in Windows XP and later operating systems.

• Windows XP uses an Open Type font "Tunga" to display Kannada UNICODE text.

• Windows XP uses an Open Type font "Gautami" to display Telugu UNICODE text.

• Windows XP uses an Open Type font "Shruti" to display Gujarati UNICODE text.

• Windows XP uses an Open Type font "Raavi" to display Gurumukhi UNICODE text.

Malayalam, Bengali

• UNICODE for Malayalam, Bengali scripts is supported only in Windows XP SP2 and later operating systems.

• Windows XP uses an Open Type font "Kartika" to display Malayalam UNICODE text.

• Windows XP uses an Open Type font "Vrinda" to display Bengali UNICODE text.

Oriya

• Oriya script is not yet supported by Windows operating systems.

• Windows XP shows Oriya UNICODE, provided a OpenType font that has Oriya characters (such as Arial Unicode MS) is installed in the system.