Parabaas Axar

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Help Menu:

Scroll down for help on the following topics: 1. Basic Operation 2. Opening and Saving Files 3. Font and Style Change 4. Multilingual Text 5. Itrans Primer 6. Troubleshooting

1. Basic Operation: Parabaas Axar is a Word Processor that allows you to write Indic languages in Roman letters using a simple transliteration scheme based on Itrans. Support is currently available for the following languages: Ahamiya, Bangla, Hindi and Marathi. To learn more about the transliteration scheme go to section 5.

First choose a language/script from the menubar dropdown list. Next choose a mode of operation. The default language is Bangla and the default mode of operation is the one pane mode. In a future version you will be able to change the defaults.

There are two main modes of operation.

(i) One pane mode: Click "Mode" and then click "One Pane" to get the one pane mode. In this mode typing of Itrans-ed text in the editable pane directly outputs Indic text. The one pane mode is a multi-lingual mode, allowing you to write in several Indic language at once.

Example (if the language chosen is Bangla):
You type: "ki kari kothaafa yaa_i pakeTe kuTakuTa kare Taakaa".
You see: "A@Ø @ØAÌ À@ØÉËÉÝ sÉq ÞÀ@ØÀv @بv@بv @ØÀÌ vÉ@ØÉ"

The one pane mode is considerably faster, especially when writing long documents.

(ii) Two pane mode: If you click on the menu named "Mode" the mode marked "Two Pane" the window splits into two panes. The two pane mode allows you to type in only one Indic language at a time. When you choose this mode you are prompted to choose your preferred language. You can type Itrans-ed Roman text in one pane (the upper pane or the left pane) and view the Indic equivalent text in another pane. The second pane (the viewer) is refreshed after every keystroke to reflect changes made to the first pane (the editor).  In the normal view, the editor is the upper pane and the viewer is the lower pane. You can change this view by clicking on "Mode" and then on the "View: Wide/Tall" checkbox to convert to a view where the panes are placed side by side. In the two pane mode, the viewer is not editable.

This mode allows you to see the Itransed Roman text and the Indic text at the same time. Although slower, it may be useful for beginners.
 

(iii) Common word processing utilities such as cut, paste, copy, undo, search, replace etc are available. Note: In the current version you can go back upto four steps in history with the "undo" button. The search/replace menu-item opens a dialog box where you can search for text in Ahamiya, Bangla, Hindi, Marathi or Roman letters and replace them with text of any of the above five types when you are in the one pane mode. Currently the cut, copy or paste operations do not work with styled text; when you paste the copied text, it appears with the style and font attributes of the paragraph you are pasting into. Styled copy and paste will be available in a future release.

(iv) Conversion to Itransed Roman text: In the One Pane Mode, you can convert the Indic text you have typed into an equivalent Roman text by clicking on the menu-item titled "Get Roman" (inside the menu titled "Conversions"). This will open up a second pane, the Roman Pane, for you. You may not edit the Roman Pane in this mode, but you can save its contents as a text file. Note: In the current version Hindi and Marathi text can not be converted back to Roman. This feature will be available in a future release.

(v) In the two pane mode the menu titled "Conversions" has two more menu-items titled "Fast Update" and "Styled Update". The first refreshes the "viewer" pane with text in plain 18 pt font in the currently applicable language. The second refreshes the "viewer" in the same manner, but with styled text. The use of these buttons is to get you out of situations where the application may be hung while you are in the two pane mode.

2. Opening and Saving Files: You can insert text files into the Roman Pane and save the contents of this Pane as a text file (no style information is stored currently). The contents of the Indic Pane can be saved as an html file, which will faithfully reproduce all styles, or as a text file which will store only the text. You may re-open an html or text file produced in this manner into the Indic Pane. (HTMLs generated by other sources may not open successfully in this version). The "Open" and "Save" options can be found in the "File" Menu. Make sure you save the Indic text with the appropriate extension (.txt or .html). Text files save and open faster than HTML files. If no file extension is specified, files will save as text.

3. Font and Style Change: By selecting text with the mouse and clicking on a number from the "Font Size" menu, you can change the font size. Foreground color and font style can be changed by selecting colors and styles from the "Style" menu. In the two pane mode, Indic words will aquire the style of the first letter of the corresponding Itrans-ed word. In other words, every word in the two pane mode will appear with the same font and style attributes in the Indic (viewer) pane.

4. Multlingual Text: By selecting a new language/script from the dropdown in the menubar you can turn on the transliteration scheme for that language. By selecting "Roman" you turn off all transliteration and your font changes to a SansSerif Roman font.

5. Itrans Primer:  We support a slightly modified version of Itrans. The widespread use of Itrans warrants only minimal modifications. For Hindi/Marathi the modifications consist of sometimes supporting only one out of several alternative transliteration schemes for a character. In future releases the alternative schemes may be supported. For Ahamiya/Bangla the only changes from the initial Itrans scheme are : "Y" for  "Ý"(originally "f") and "amartya" instead of "amatya.r" for  "~T©F»". These changes have probably been incorporated into a later version of Itrans anyway. The transliteration table for Ahamiya/Bangla follows. A similar table for Hindi/Marathi will be available soon.

 

The Transliteration scheme for Ahamiya/Bangla

 ~, ~É, ´, î, q, D, Ç, j, Ù, R, Í, ~FÉ

a, aa(A), u, uu(U), i, ii(I), R^i(^), e, ai, o, au, YA

@Ø, Z, w, W, C 

ka, kha, ga, gha, ~Na

O, a, B, I, t 

cha(ca), chha(Ca), ja, jha(Ja), ~n

v, i, ¦, b, H 

Ta, Tha, Da, Dha, Na

©, Ë, °, o, S 

ta, tha, da, dha, na

Þ, ¬Ø, c, g, T 

pa, pha, ba, bha, ma

s, Ì, ì, U, ®, r, K, ö, Ý, ¦Û, bÛ

ya, ra, va, la, sa, sha, shha, ha, fa (Ya), .Da, .Dha

e, :, J 

.n, H, .N 

 » (À̬Ø),  ü (ö®^ä) 

.r, .h 

Ú, QØ, Q|, l, í

GYa, xa, mha, t.h, hna

The last row above contained some special characters. This table of characters and some simple rules for ligatures are all you need to begin. Examples are far better than precept in these primers.

Rules of ligatures
 

@Ø, @ØÉ, A@Ø, @Øf, @ب, @Øk , @Øp, À@Ø, P@Ø, À@ØÉ, À@ØM 

ka, kaa, ki ,kI(kii), ku, kU(kuu), kR^i, ke, kai, ko, kau

ê, nØ, ½, No, N°, ²gþ, TF 

kka, kra, kta, bdha, bda, mbhra, mya 

ö¨, è, æ, µ, ¡, ø, ^°ª 

hu, shu, gu, ~nja, ~ncha, ~nchha, ndba 

®TfÌ gÁÉOÉs» 

samIra (samIr)  bhaTTaachaaya.r

ÞÌcÉ® ®²ÞÉ°À@ØÌ T¨Ð¨ OÉq 

parabaas sampaadakera muNDu chaa_i 

Ù, ~q 

ai, a_i 

 

A few rules need commenting upon:
(i) Two distinct swars should be seperated by an underscore. "ai" is "Ù" and "a_i" is "~q".
(ii) The trailing "a" in any word may be dropped. "samIr" and "samIra" are equivalent.
(iii) (This one is nasty) In the original scheme "reph" comes after the vyanjan it applies to. "cKÉ»" is "bashhaa.r". In our scheme "barshhaa" is also supported.
 
 

6. Troubleshooting: In desperate situations save both Panes (if possible) before you do anything else. If the application seems to be hung, you may have to resort to selecting text from the panes and copying it into a Notepad like application. When the application is hung, close it by typing control-alt-delete and choose the Windows "Task Manager" from the dialog box. Select "Parabaas Axar" from the Task Manager and choose "End Task". Report bugs to : parabaas@parabaas.com.