Tamil Phonetic Input for Emacs

Phonetic Input Method for Tamil

The default key mappings are same as that provided by ”Tamil Phonetic Input Method” bundled with Debian’s ”Multilingual text processing library - database” (m17n-db), specifically version 1.8.0-3. See following links for more details:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/m17n

The m17n library is to support various aspects (e.g. input methods, layout engines) of multi-lingual text processing.

https://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/m17n/m17n-db.git/plain/MIM/ta-phonetic.mim?h=REL-1-8-0

ta-phonetic.mim (v1.8.0)

https://packages.debian.org/m17n-db

Multilingual text processing library - database

Implementations details

Implementation parallels Emacs’ in-built tamil-itrans input method.

Differences between ta-phonetic.mim and this library

• ta-phonetic.mim has NO entries for ௐ. This library maps it to keys AUM and OM, the same sequences of keys used by tamil-itrans.
• ta-phonetic.mim has NO entries for Tamil decimal digits. This library (optionally) maps them to latin decimal digits.
• ta-phonetic.mim maps character ஸ்ரீ to keys sri. That character is apparently composed with individual characters ஸ் and ரீ. So, this library provides no additional entries for this character. So, to input ஸ்ரீ with this library use Srii.

Additional Comments

The default mappings installed by ta-phonetic.mim (and hence this library) are in some instances unintuitive, confusing or contrary to what a native speaker would come to expect. Despite this limitation, this library uses the same input keys as ta-phonetic.mim. This choice is deliberate. This allows you to easily switch between typing in Emacs’ (using this library), and typing in Tamil in other apps like LibreOffice (using m17n-db).

User Customization

If you disagree with the default mappings installed by this library, you can set up your own mappings by customizing tamil-phonetic-vowels and tamil-phonetic-consonants.

If you would like to input Tamil Decimal Numerals, turn on the option tamil-phonetic-use-tamil-decimal-digits .

User Commands for Transliteration

Much like tamil-itrans, you can use this library to transliterate between English and Tamil using the following commands:

M-x tamil-phonetic-transiterate-english->tamil

Convert English letters in marked region to Tamil.

M-x tamil-phonetic-transiterate-tamil->english

Convert Tamil letters in marked region to English.

Emacs Bugs/RFEs

This library duplicates some code from Emacs’ itrans libraries. This duplication can be avoided once the issues mentioned in https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=50143 are addressed.

TODOs

• Add a :set function for all defcustom s.
• Fix byte compilation: The macro indian-translate-region evals tamil-phonetic-hashtable during compile time. So, byte compilation of this file will fail. As a workaround, just load the uncompiled file. Consider adding an eval-and-compile or other equivalent workarounds.