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Product Innovation
Computing in your mother tongue
Typing in regional languages is no big deal; however, typing
with ease is an issue. Lipikar helps you do just that
 With
a large English-speaking population and owing to the complexities of multi-lingual
platforms, software vendors have for long overlooked the end-user’s need
to type and read in their regional languages. While there are applications in
the market to do this, the point is that most of them make typing in regional
languages so complex that most people prefer to skip the whole issue. To address
this issue, Databyte Equipment Private Limited, a technology company based in
Pune developed Lipikar, a multi-lingual Indic platform. It provides two products
for Indic language users—a Desktop Plugin for Windows and IE, and a Free
Extension to the popular Mozilla FireFox browser.
To start using Lipikaar, just three simple rules are to be
followed, and one can be ready to type in any of the 15 regional languages supported.
The product lets you type with ease in Devnagari (Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit,
Nepali, Konkani, Kashmiri, Sindhi), Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu,
Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu.
 Lipikaar
is a new way of typing in any of these languages. Its simplicity and ease of
use makes it adaptable for any PC or Web user. Lipikaar works on the simple
idea that pressing the phonetically nearest English keyboard character to the
character in your favorite language should result in that desired character.
Pressing the same key again, should result in the next nearest, and so on.
Lipikaar is a patented method designed for professional use.
It supports the complete character set as recommended by Bureau of Indian Standards
including four forms of vowels and two forms of “r” for South Indian
languages.
Rules
- SMS Style: Type the closest sounding English
key one or more times, until you see the script character you want.
- X for half: Type x after any character to
make it half-character.
- Z for everything else: Type z to get all
the special characters and symbols of your script.
Benefits
- Only alphabet keys are used.
- No struggling with the correct English spellings
(transliteration).
- No pop-up language keyboards required.
- No guessing or prompting necessary.
- No clumsy keystrokes.
- Even the most complicated word can be typed effortlessly
in seconds.
- Easy switching from English to another language.
Beyond Transliteration
- Why transliteration does not work in all cases?
- Silent Characters: There are many silent
characters in Languages like Malayalam, Tamil and other Indic scripts which
may have different spellings but they are phonetically quite different. For
an intelligent transliteration algorithm, it becomes difficult to interpret
these words.
- Dialects, Slang and Subsets: Munnabhai can’t
think of using transliteration because his language is way too advanced for
the algorithm to understand. E.g. Abe cirkit raapchandoos item hai baap, bole
toh becomes +ɤÉä ºÉÐE]â®É{ÉÊSÉE
+ªÉ]¨É ½è ¤ÉÉ{É
¤ÉÉä±Éä iÉÉä,
while Munna would expect +¤Éä ºÉ®ÊE
] ®É{ÉÊSÉE +ªÉ]¨É ½è
¤ÉÉ{É ¤ÉÉä±Éä
iÉÉä Also, since a language like Devnagri forms a superset
of many other languages (Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Nepali, Konkani, Kashmiri,
Sindhi), it takes too much effort to come up with concise algorithms for these.
- Emphasis and Consonants: Many languages from
South India have a strong emphasis on characters. Consider the example, Reddy
becomes ®äbÒ, while we want a ®äbÂbÒ,
chitthi becomes ÊSÉi½Ò, but we expect ÊSÉ`Â`Ò
- Hybrid words: Hinglish is today’s trend. More
publishers want to use hybrid languages from their regions to add some spice
into the articles. To write “VÉ¤É we met” instead
of Jab we met, we need an easy switching mechanism rather than typing some
words in the regional language and pasting other English words from a different
editor.
 Lipikaar
avoids these problems as it does not rely on a dictionary of matching words
for the English transliteration. All that is needed is for you to follow the
three rules and any word that you have in mind can be typed.
A free extension for Firefox
A free extension to the popular FireFox browser lets you
create multi-lingual emails, blogs, scraps, comments and chats in the supported
languages. Supported Firefox versions include Mozilla Firefox Version 1.5.x
to 2.0.x (Firefox Version 3 currently not supported).
Desktop version
The Lipikaar desktop runs on the Windows platform. It works
as a background application, and allows users to very easily switch between
English and their language through the CapsLock key.
It allows direct typing in the Indian languages in all windows
applications. Integrates your language with Office Applications like Microsoft
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Applications such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla
Firefox, GTalk, Yahoo! Messenger and Desktop Applications like Notepad, WordPad,
Desktop Publishing, Productivity Applications etc.
Lipikar is available for Rs. 799 per user (residing in India)
and $19.99 per user (residing outside India). However, you can freely download
and install the trial version on your computer for evaluation.
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