Happy New Year 2011 :-)
The first ever competitve typing game on the web - TypeRacer, is now available in Malayalam.
Although TypeRacer supports 50+ languages already, the quotes in those languages are generated from the quotes in TypeRacer English (http://play.typeracer.com) using Google Translate. Thus, Malayalam is the first language in TypeRacer, apart from English, with original quotes.
When I added quotes in the universe using the Unicode 5.0 standard, the chillaksharams were not rendered correctly, due to the problem of joiners. So I've used the Unicode 5.1 standard, which supports Atomic Chillus. Hence the quotes can only be viewed perfectly using a font supporting the latest unicode version.
Malayalam can be inputted using Transliteration and Phonetic tools. But typing in Malayalam essentially means entering the characters directly using a keyboard layout. InScript (developed by C-DAC GIST) is the standard keyboard layout for Indian languages and, is the best way of inputting Indic text. It's pretty easy to learn and you can type in 12 Indian scripts.
C-DAC has proposed an Enhanced Inscript Layout for Indian languages to follow the latest Unicode standard.
In Malayalam inscript, the major update is the allocation of separate keys for chillaksharams (for inputting atomic chillus).
X (Shift x) - ൺ (ണ്)
V (Shift v) - ൻ (ന്)
\ (Normal \) - ർ (ര്)
> (Shift .) - ൽ (ല്)
* (Shift 8) - ൾ (ള്)
Changes I've made to the proposed layout by C-DAC:
• Included the Chillaksharam - ൿ, which was excluded, on Shift \.
• Included zero-width space on Extended 3 (AltGr + 3).
• Swapped the switching of English and Malayalam layouts. English QWERTY layout is selected when Caps Lock is active.
• Added common koottaksharams on extended layer.
• Added common koottaksharams on extended layer.
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* Enabling Malayalam on your computer
* Enabling Malayalam Inscript in XP
- Go to Control Panel
- In the "Regional and Language Options", click the "Languages" tab.
- Click on the "Details" button.
- Click the "Add" button to add a keyboard for Malayalam.
- In the drop-down box, select Malayalam under language and Malayalam Inscript under Keyboard layout/IME
- Now select "OK" to save changes.
First Race on Malayalam TypeRacer :-)
Coming back to Malayalam TypeRacer, I've compiled 200+ quotes. As of now, only less than ten of them are movie dialogues. Rest of them are the lyrics of Malayalam songs, which are available quite easily.
Please do contribute popular (classic) dialogues in Malayalam movies / books, preferably monologues and those which are more than 100 characters in length.
Also please do notify me of spelling / grammatical errors.
--
Jaideep John Rodriguez
