Microsoft Phonetic Input Tool

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This is an awesome tool for people who like to type in mails, IM, etc in their own Indian language, but not to learn the complex keyboard layout. I've been using this tool for a very long time and now it is in public beta. It is very intuitive and easy to integrate into the normal applications. Did I mention, it supports 13 Indic languages, excerpt from the source...

Microsoft Phonetic Input Tool beta provides an intuitive method for users to input text in 13 Indic languages namely Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Sanskrit, Assamese, Oriya and Konkani using standard QWERTY keyboard. The main features of the Phonetic Input Tool are

• Users can type text in English the way it sounds in native Language. The input text automatically appears in the native Language. This tool is very useful for bilingual/multilingual users who normally type using English Keyboard and would like to write messages / documents in their native language by typing in English.


• This tool uses phonetic schemes for transliterating the text. Phonetic scheme for each supported language is available with the download of the tool in online help.


• Reverse Transliteration feature of this tool converts the transliterated text back into English text to see what the typed message sounds like before sending it. This is additional benefit for users who speak a particular language but don’t know the script of the language to write in it.


• This tool also allows cross transliteration which is conversion of text transliterated into a language into other languages supported by the tool. This is word to word conversion of the native language text based on sound into another language.


• The phonetic tool also supports conversion of text to Unicode Escape characters, HTML numeric character Reference and HTML Encoding.


• A simple drop down list enables convenient switching between the languages.


• It works with all Unicode-aware applications including MS Office, Hotmail, Instant Messengers, and Notepad etc. This phonetic Input Tool takes away the complexity of communicating in multiple languages through various Windows applications.


• Microsoft Phonetic Input Tool eliminates the need for native language keyboard to communicate in native language.


• This Phonetic Input Tool works on Windows XP and VISTA platforms.

later...