Vishal Monpara’s Blog

Today I am going to explore various ways to easily type in Indian languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu very easily in your favourite CMS Joomla.

There are 3 methods you can use depending on your editor choice.

1. Using JCE Editor
2. Using FCKEditor
3. Using TinyMCE editor

Using JCE Editor

You have to first install JCE Editor along with plugins. It is assumed that JCE editor is your default editor. You can check/set it by going to Administration > Site menu > Global Configuration and look for Default WYSIWYG Editor.

1. Download IndicIME plugin for TinyMCE and put it at WEBROOT\plugins\editors\jce\tiny_mce\plugins so that “indicime” will become sub-folder of plugins.
2. Now navigate to Administration > Components > JCE Administration > Plugins. Click on “New Plugin” button on the right side.
   
3. Fill in the form as described below and “Save” the plugin.

   Description: IndicIME
   Plugin Name: indicime
   Plugin Icon: indicime,indicimehelp
   Layout Icon: indicimehelp

   

4. Now navigate to Administration > Components > JCE Administration > Groups. Select the Group(For ex. Default). Go to Layout tab and you will see a button as indicated in image with red square. You can drag this button and drop it in Current Editor Layout anywhere you like and “Save” it.
   
5. Now clear browser cache (It is very important) and try to add new article. IndicIME and IndicIME help buttons will show up.
   
6. Enjoy typing in Indian languages.

Using FCKEditor

You have to first download FCKEditor for Joomla and install this plugin. It is assumed that FCKEditor is your default editor. You can check/set it by going to Administration > Site menu > Global Configuration and look for Default WYSIWYG Editor.

1. Download IndicIME plugin for FCKEditor and put it at WEBROOT\plugins\editors\fckeditor\editor\plugins so that “indicime” will become sub-folder of plugins.
2. Now browse to WEBROOT\plugins\editors\fckeditor\editor and open the file “jtoolbarsetconfig.xml”
3. At the very bottom, you will get “customplugins” node. Add the following line at the end.

   <add name="indicime" lang="en"/>

   So it will look like this.
   

4. Now when you analyze this xml file, you will notice that it contains button list for three types of toolbars named “Advanced”, “Creative” and “Blog”. In each of these toolbars, you may want to add the IndicIME so find a good place to paste the following code as shown in the image.

   <plugingroup>
   <plugin name="indicime" acl="*">
   <params>
   <param name="IndicIMEScripts" value="My Bengali:bengali;My Gujarati:gujarati;My Devnagari: devnagari" />
   </params>
   </plugin>
   <plugin name="indicimehelp" acl="*"/>
   </plugingroup>

   Using this code, you will be able to customize the language list. If you don’t want to customize the list, remove the text “<params>…</params>”.(Make sure it is “<params>” and not “<param>”)
   

5. Now clear browser cache (It is very important) and try to add new article. IndicIME and IndicIME help buttons will show up.
   
6. Enjoy typing in Indian languages.

Using TinyMCE Editor

It is assumed that TinyMCE editor is your default editor. You can check/set it by going to Administration > Site menu > Global Configuration and look for Default WYSIWYG Editor.

1. Download IndicIME plugin for TinyMCE and put it at WEBROOT\plugins\editors\tinymce\jscripts\tiny_mce\plugins so that “indicime” will become sub-folder of plugins.
2. Now from Administration menu, navigate to Extensions > Plugins > Editor – TinyMCE.
3. On the right hand side, Open the section “Plugin Parameters” and choose “Extended” Functionality.
   
4. Now open the section “Advanced Parameters” and at the very bottom, add “indicime” custom plugin and “indicime,indicimehelp” custom button.
   
5. Now when you try to add new article, it will show you IndicIME and IndicIME Help.
   
6. Enjoy typing in Indian languages.

Limitation of using TinyMCE is that if you want to customize the list of languages, you need to change php code heavily.

Here is a procedure on how to enable Drupal 6 to write in Indian language Bengali / Gujarati / Hindi / Marathi / Sanskrit / Kannada / Malayalam / Oriya / Punjabi / Tamil and Telugu.

Prerequisite:

1. Download Wysiwyg project and install it at WEBROOT\sites\all\modules\wysiwyg. Enable this module by navigating to Administer > Site Building > Modules.
2. Download TinyMCE / FCKEditor and install it at WEBROOT\sites\all\libraries\tinymce(/fckeditor).

There are two ways to enable Drupal 6 to allow user to type in Indian scripts.

1. Using TinyMCE
2. Using FCKEditor

Both are equally capable with almost same functionality but it is just a matter of personal choice which one to use.

Using FCKEditor

1. Download IndicIME plugin for FCKEditor and put it at WEBROOT\sites\all\libraries\fckeditor\editor\plugins so that “indicime” will become sub-folder of plugins
2. Open the file WEBROOT\sites\all\modules\wysiwyg\editors\fckeditor.inc in text editor
3. Copy/paste following code at the very bottom in the function wysiwyg_fckeditor_plugins.

   'indicime' => array(
         'path' => $editor['library path'] . '/editor/plugins',
         'buttons' => array(
           'indicime' => t('IndicIME'),
           'indicimehelp' => t('IndicIME Help'),
         ),
         'options' => array (
           'IndicIMEScripts' => t('My Bengali:bengali;My Gujarati:gujarati;My Devanagari:devanagari;English (F12):english'),
         ),
         'internal' => TRUE,
         'load' => TRUE,
       ),

4. If you want all scripts to be shown, remove “options” line from the above code. “options” is given to show you easy customization of list.
5. Now navigate to Administer > Site Configuration > Wysiwyg.
6. For “Filtered HTML” and “Full HTML” input format, select “FCKEditor” and “Save”.
7. After saving, you will be shown an option for “Edit” for each input format.
   
8. Click on “Edit” and open section “Buttons and Plugins”. Select “IndicIME” and “IndicIME Help” button for both input format and “Save”.
   
9. Now navigate to Create Content > Page, you will get Indic IME drop down box for choosing language and help button to show keyboard.
10. Enjoy typing in your own language.

Using TinyMCE

1. Download IndicIME plugin for TinyMCE and put it at WEBROOT\sites\all\libraries\tinymce\jscripts\tiny_mce\plugins so that “indicime” will become sub-folder of plugins
2. Open the file WEBROOT\sites\all\modules\wysiwyg\editors\tinymce.inc in text editor
3. Copy/paste following code at the very bottom in the function wysiwyg_tinymce_plugins.

   'indicime' => array(
           'path' => $editor['library path'] .'/plugins/indicime',
           'buttons' => array(
             'indicime' => t('IndicIME'),
             'indicimehelp' => t('IndicIME Help')
           ),
           'options' => array (
             'indicime_scripts' => t('My Bengali:bengali;My Gujarati:gujarati;My Devanagari:devanagari;English (F12):english')
           ),
           'internal' => TRUE,
           'load' => TRUE,
            ),

4. If you want all scripts to be shown, remove “options” line from the above code. “options” is given to show you easy customization of list.
5. Now navigate to Administer > Site Configuration > Wysiwyg.
6. For “Filtered HTML” and “Full HTML” input format, select “TinyMCE” and “Save”.
7. After saving, you will be shown an option for “Edit” for each input format.
   
8. Click on “Edit” and open section “Buttons and Plugins”. Select “IndicIME” and “IndicIME Help” button for both input format and “Save”.
   
9. Now navigate to Create Content > Page, you will get Indic IME drop down box for choosing language and help button to show keyboard.
10. Enjoy typing in your own language.

Update 4th Jan, 2009: I have added code to customize the list of scripts for TinyMCE and FCKEditor. Thanks to Ramana.

From past few months I was working on updating PramukhLib: Javascript library for Indian Script. This library can provide your Website a power to write in 9 different Indian scripts (not languages). I have done major changes in the library including functional changes as well as character mapping changes.

I have created many tools that depend on PramukhLib library. All of those tools were also updated to use new script. Version number for each tool is increased to match to that of PramukhLib. Here is a list of all tools those were updated

• PramukhLib: Javascript Library
• IndicIME TinyMCE plugin
• IndicIME FCKEditor plugin
• IndicIME WordPress plugin
• Pramukh Type Pad: WYSIWYG HTML editor
• Pramukh Type Pad: Firefox Extension (Add-on)

Read more…

Many of you are aware of Pramukh Type Pad for easily typing into 9 Indian script. I have also created many IndicIME plugin for TinyMCE 2.x, 3.x, FCKEditor and PramukhLib javascript library to easily integrate it with existing Website and enable Indian script typing for its visitor. This requires the Website to install this plugin/library onto their server. It gives benefit to the Website owner that visitor can easily type in choosen Indian script but if the visitor is avid Indian script writer, s/he has to type in Indian script somewhere else and copy/paste the writing if Website s/he visits does not contain above mentioned script. To alleviate this problem, I have created Add-On for avid Firefox user. It supports Firefox 1.5 – 3.x. You can download this add-on from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10827. Currently this add-on is under review mode so it requires user to login and then download. Click the link below if you want to download from this blog.

Download Pramukh Type Pad Firefox Add-On

Installation instruction:

If you download from mozilla add-on website, after login, click on “Add to Firefox” button and Firefox will automatically ask you to install it. Click on Install button and restart firefox.

If you download from my blog, it is a zip file. Unzip the file on your computer. The extracted file is “pramukhtypepad_ff_25.xpi”. From Firefox, go to File Menu > Open File…. Now locate the extracted file and press “Open”. It will ask you to install it. Click on Install button and restart firefox.

After restarting, it will add Script Menu at the top. You can choose the script you want to type in. This add-on has all the functionality that Pramukh Type Pad has. Pressing F12 will toggle the selected Indian script with English. Also at the bottom right status bar, you will your selected script. This add-on remembers the selected script and when you open up the browser next time, it will automatically select the last selected script for you.

Enjoy typing in your favourite Indian language.