राग, ताल, बोल, चलन, गत !  पैत्रिक बहुत आनंद है !

Rag, Tal, Bol, Chalan, Gat !  Patrick is very happy !

After trying and trying for more than a month to implement Hindi writing using Devanagari script while writing articles, I finally succeeded with a wonderful step by step installation process given in Vishal Monpara's Blog. That's a treat! Let him be thanked wholeheartedly.

You have first to download IndicIME Tiny MCE Plugin if, like me, your text editor is - by default - JCE (or Tiny MCE) on Joomla. Beware ! Do not try to instal it automatically, using the instal/uninstal function of Joomla's backend. That's why it was not working for me. You have to do a manual installation. I did it with the Transmit app.

Following the instructions of the so well done "how to", you'll get a button in JCE editor window. This button will allow you to shift between English or Hindi. By the way, you can get 9 Indian languages ! The letter  button on the right is an help. It gives you  keyboard correspondances.

You phonetically type in Hindi following your English keyboard (QWERTY) or, for me, the French AZERTY keyboard. You don't translate but simply transliterate : N will give you न and so on... Of course, it will take a bit of practice to write in Hindi. Correct writing of Sanskrit words will probably not be obvious (as there are many more letters than in modern Hindi - and also the conjunct consonants). And that will be a bit handicapping as Hindustani Shastriya Sangeet terminology is Sanskrit.

What puzzles me most is that it works even if the visitor browsing the site doesn't have the languages set. I just checked with the help of my companion's iPhone, looking into an article test in Safari and lol ! It works ! That's just magic! Got almost demoleculized !

That's mystery to me and anyone able to shed some light (in a simple fashion, please) is most welcome to write a comment!

The ability to shift between French/English/Hindi will allow me to write Gats गत, Chalans ्च्ल्न, Swar Prastars ्स्वर प्र्स्तार and Bols बोल in the Indian Music Page. Blessed be the human who wrote such a fantastic app and who shares it with the rest of us. Pure Generosity. Woody Allen would say "a pride to human race", I'll keep this expression, just removing the slight ironic scorn attached to it!

Writing samples:

Rag Bilaval - Chalan (राग बिलावल - चलन)

सा ग, रे ग प, नीध नीसा / सा नी ध प म ग, रे ग प म ग, म रे, सा

Bols (बोल) (rhythmic meters) 

दा,  रा, दिर,  रदा,  -र,  अर

da, ra, dir, rda,   -r,   ar

Supplétif...  jeudi 12 mai 2011

Pas de bol. J'avais testé sur l'iMac, le MacBookPro et l'iPhone : cela fonctionnait et les polices de caractères s'affichaient bien, comme dans un rêve. Et c'est là où le bât blesse. Au téléphone avec mon fils Lalit, je lui demande de regarder cet article et il me dit qu'il ne voyait que d'horribles carrés. Heureusement que je n'ai pas de dentier. Je l'aurais probablement avalé et serais mort, étouffé, dans d'affreuses souffrances. Il m'envoie illico une copie d'écran et paf ! l'horreur. Cela ne marche pas. (Je l'avais brièvement suspecté de me faire faire un infarctus massif pour hériter rapidement.) Effectivement, pour gagner de la place, il avait enlevé les polices de caractères de Mac OS X. L'iOS de l'iPhone doit être multilangue par défaut puisque cela marche sur les 3 iPhone testés.

Cela signifierait donc qu'il faut avoir les polices de caractères présentes dans le système de l'ordi, que l'on soit sous Mac OS X, Windows ou Linux. Je ne peux qu'espérer que les utilisateurs indiens les ont dans le système ainsi que la plupart des gens puisque, comme le chinois, le Kanji, l'Arabe, l'Hébreu, le Cyrillique etc...elles sont installées par défaut. Seuls les bidouilleurs ont tendance à les enlever pour gagner de la place. Il est vrai que App Cleaner pour Mac ainsi que d'autres Apps du même ordre nous propose de les enlever mais, heureusement, tout le monde n'utilise pas ces logiciels de bidouilleurs. Il n'y avait donc pas de magie. Il fallait que le language file soit installé dans l'ordi du consultant du site puisqu'il ne s'agit évidemment pas d'une image ou d'un pdf, qui n'est rien d'autre qu'un format international d'image (Portable Document File). Ma peine est immense et j'attends vos commentaires pour savoir si vousl lisez en Devanagari ou non. Je vais peut-être boire pour oublier (pas encore pour me rappeler!)

Followed ...  Thursday, May 12, 2011

No luck. I had tested the article on an iMac, a MacBook Pro, and iPhones: That was working alright and the Devanagari Fonts were correctly displayed, like in a dream. That's where it hurts. Speaking on the phone with my son Lalit, I proudly ask him to watch the article and he tells me that he doesn't see anything else than ugly squares instead of the Devanagari characters. Fortunately for me, I don't have a denture. I would have swallowed it and would have probably died, stifled,  in terrible sufferance. He sends me a screen copy and gasp ! He was telling the truth ! (I had briefly suspected him to give me a massive heart attack in order to inheritate quicker). Actually , in order to gain some space on his Hard Drive, he had removed Devanagari Fonts from Mac OS X. The iOS of the iPhone must multi-language based by defaut as it works alright on the 3 tested iPhones.

This seems to indicate that you must have Devanagari Fonts installed in your system, let it be Mac OS X, Windows or Linux. I can only hope that Indian users have them as well as most of the people in the world. That also goes for Chinese, Kanji, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic etc... which are automatically installed "by default". Power users are the only ones who have a tendancy to remove them  in order to gain some space. It is true to say that App Cleaner for Mac as well as a number of equivalent apps  propose to remove unused language files / fonts but fortunately, everybody doesn't use these type of apps. There was no magic as I had said. You have to have fonts/languages files in your OS so that you may read them properly. These are no images, no pdf (portable  document file) which is nothing than an international image format. My sorrow is huge and I am eagerly awaiting your comments just to know if your browser reads Devanagari - or not - in this article. I may have to drink a bit to forget (not to remember, yet !)

Update ! 30/12/12

Since I migrated from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5.8, I am distressed not to be able to use Pramukhime / Indic IME anymore. Spent hours trying to install but without success. So, I finally tried Bernard Lombard's solution (posted in Comments) and lol ! it works : it needs you to go, when you want to type in Devanagari, to http://www.lexilogos.com/clavier/sanskrit_devanagari.htm and you just have to copy/paste what you want to include in your article.  That's much less practical than the previous way of shifting from English-French language menu to Hindi in JCE but this is a palliative... At least, it works : राग, ताल, बोल