Hi all,

This is a post which I mailed to the India community during the release of the Indic typing tool. I feel it is also relevant for this list. So, sending it again ;-)

Recently YuviPanda visited us during his vacation along with John and Rob from WMF. Yuvi spent a week with us and I got a chance to explain how problematic it is for a mobile user to type in Indic languages though most smartphones have sound font support and rendering. I explained him what an end user would like to have (A simple interface and easy navigation, options to switch typing schemes/languages (Indic ↔ English) and readable Indic font size). Based on the jQuery.ime for Indic languages Yuvi created a prototype (http://goo.gl/jH3TO).

In rounds of testing and bug fixing finally it is here: http://yuvi.in/indic -typing/index.html Right now it works online for most smartphones having Indic and rendering support. Someone can use it online from the same link above. The offline version works fro iPhone and Yuvi is working on fixing bugs for Android. The offline app will soon be available for Android. Once it works perfectly with Android it will be made available for free in Android market. We are still to test this for Symbian, Blackberry and Windows, 3 other market leaders. Please test and give us feedback and report bugs on Metahttp://goo.gl/sBiaF (http://goo.gl/sBiaF).

I am still in the pipeline to persuade to add a feature for searching on Indic wikipedias from this app. Please join me clapping for Yuvi for this amazing tool and persuading him for adding the search option for Indicwikipedias which will enable a user to search in a respective language wikipedia by typing a particular word in this tool!

*Quick links:* *-> Link to the tool:* http://bitly.com/indictyping *-> Tutorial to use it online and offline (For iPhone):* http://goo.gl/HdVJW *-> Quick links:*

- Source code: https://github.com/yuvipanda/indic-typing-tool - Test the app and report the bugs directly on GitHubhttps://github.com/yuvipanda/indic-typing-tool/issues or on Meta http://goo.gl/sBiaF. - App credits: YuviPanda http://yuvi.in/, Subhashish Panigrahihttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish , Santhosh Thottingalhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Santhosh.thottingal

->* Blog post about the toolhttp://cis-india.org/openness/blog/typing-in-indic-languages-from-mobiles *: (http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/typing-in-indic -languages-from-mobiles)

-- Subhashish Panigrahi Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge Centre for Internet and Society, New Delhi @psubhashish