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ISM 2000 - a Word Processor  for Indian  Languages
Sunil Misal
misal@ipr.res.in

English is the most favored language in which most web pages are constructed. However, countries all over the world are trying to put a lot of information on different web sites in their own language.  Same is the case with India, which is a multi-lingual country. Not everybody in the country know and follow English. Moreover, any information available in one’s own language is easy to understand.

HINDI being the National Language and being followed and spoken by a large Indian population, facility of word processing in Hindi has become very relevant.

Department of Atomic Energy, one of the foremost departments of Govt. of India, thro’ CDAC, has developed a software called ISM 2000 Office.  This software makes bilingual work easy in 7 other Indian languages besides Hindi / English. With the help of this software one can easily work in English and any of the available Indian languages simultaneously. Press of a single button makes the transition between English and selected Indian language easy.

The salient feature of this software is that one does not necessarily need to be familiar with the keyboard of other languages. Though a facility called ‘Inscript’ is available for those who are familiar with the keyboard layout of other languages, the software provides for phonetic interface, wherein one can just key in the words as spoken/spelt in the respective language. Another key feature of this software is that a built-in dictionary is available wherein for any word in English, one can find a word in Hindi or any other language for that matter. The software works on all windows platforms.

Procedure for using ISM 2000 Office

Upon successful installation of the software on the PC:
 

1. You will get     icon on the Desktop

2. Click on this icon. A similar icon appears on the Taskbar (at the bottom of the screen)

3. Double clicking this icon (on the Taskbar), opens-up the following screen
 

5. Desired language can be selected using the Language drop down menu.

6. The Font Type menu has the following options:
 

  • Monolingual – to type in the selected language only
  • Bi-Lingual – to type in the selected language and in English, simultaneously.
  • Mono-Lingual Web
  • Bi-Lingual Web  
     
    7. Application Categories gives a drop down list of various programs available on the computer to choose from
     
    8. The Keyboard Type menu gives four (radio button) options.  Those who are familiar with Hindi typewriter keyboard may choose Inscript.  Others can use Phonetic English.  
     
    9. The Switch Key (radio button) is the main key, which helps to toggle between the selected language and English, while typing Bilingually.  Normally Num Lock key is used for this purpose. When this key is ON, the text can be typed in the selected language.  

    Tips  

    It is very important to select the right kind of fonts before starting bilingual word processing. If you have selected BiLingual Font Type, in the application (MS Word, Excel etc.), you should select the relevant bilingual fonts e.g. DVB-TTYogeshEN, DVB-TTChitraEN etc. for bilingual word processing in Hindi (where DV stands for DEVNAGARI - the Hindi script, B stands for BILINGUAL & EN facilitates typing in English simultaneously). Fonts whose name does not end with EN are monolingual only. Similarly fonts starting with AS, BN, GJ, OR, etc., represent Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya languages respectively and so on.

     

     
    Keyboard layout
     
    Following is the keyboard layout for ISM 2000 Office
     

     

     
    Built-in Dictionary:  
     

    As explained above, this is a very good feature of the software. Typing a word in English gives the word/synonyms in the selected language. This icon appears on the desktop after successful installation of the software.  

    Clicking on this icon, opens the following window.
     

     

  • From Select The Dictionary dropdown menu, you can select the language of your choice e.g. Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Oriya etc.  
     
  • At the Enter English word text window, enter the word in English for which you want the word in the selected language.  
     
  • As you enter one-by-one the letters of the word in the text window, different words/combination of words are displayed in the Select The Word, Select The Phrase window. The local language word is displayed in the Translate d Words window.  
     
  • Out of the four radio buttons on the right, one button will be automatically selected depending upon the option that you have chosen initially.  
     

    Other multi-lingual word processors  
     
    Besides ISM 2000 Office, Leap Office is another popular multi-lingual word processor also developed by CDAC. This software has 13 Indian languages including English. Though this software has features almost similar to ISM 2000 Office, the drawback is that it does not allow simultaneous bilingual word processing at the press of a single key. Instead, it needs toggling between fonts. Other most popular way of multi-lingual word processing is by using different types of fonts. A large number of fonts like Akruti, Shusha, Shivaji, Gopika etc., are available to compose documents in different Indian languages. But these are rather difficult to use owing to different set of (keyboard) keys involved in typing these characters. Another drawback with using such fonts is that one has to keep switching between English fonts and the selected language fonts to type bilingually, as against the ease of simultaneous bilingual typing in ISM 2000 Office. Further, no help like built-in dictionary is available and one has to actually refer to the dictionary (book) manually to find the word in a local language. This is really a tedious and time consuming job.