Configuring your system to display tamil fonts properly

This blog shall be primarily a tamil blog, but this post is for those who cannot view tamil fonts properly in their browser, especially firefox. (At the time of writing this, Internet Explorer is not found to have any problem in rendering tamil fonts, to be precise, tamil “unicode” fonts.)

What is unicode?:

Here is how “wikipedia” defines it:

“Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems.”

- Ref: Wikipedia article

And the most commonly used character set to represent unicode characters is “UTF-8″.

Unicode support in windows:

If you are a linux user, chances are there for unicode support for “indian languages” or “indic scripts” is enabled by default. Where as in most typical windows installations, unicode support for “indic scripts” is not enabled by default. (Unless you installed windows yourself and carefully selected the option to install the character set for “indic scripts”.)

But if you are using internet explorer (i recommend you to try firefox), one pleasant surprise is the support for rendering “unicode” character set. As a result, you can view the tamil posts in this blog without any problem in internet explorer.

Installing unicode support in windows:

There is a great article in wikipedia regarding this.

Installing Unicode support in Windows

It basically explains about two options:

1. Installing unicode support by using windows cd.

2. Installing unicode support by installing e-kalappai. (which comes with it’s own unicode engine)

Both options are easy to implement. But if you are using your company’s PC or notebook, the first option might be a bit difficult for you. Choose the appropriate option which meets your need.

I will continue giving more information and links in my next post regarding tamil input or tamil typing.