Tamil & Sanskrit Unicode

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Vannakam NamaskaramRecently someone asked the question: Can we have a program to transliterate Tamil lipi into Devanagari lipi?The Short Answer: No. Because Tamil lipi uses some symbols to represent MORE THAN ONE sound or letter in Devanagari. Therefore one has to know which Devanagari symbol is meant when transliterating the Tamil lipi. If the Tamil lipi used includes subscripted numbers (this can be done in Unicode or there is also a Non-Unicode Numbered Tamil font from IIT Chennai) then and only then can we transliterate Tamil lipi into Devanagari lipi. (If anyone want instructions on how to write Numbered Tamil lipi either in Unicode or with the IIT font please contact me.)The Longer Answer: Yes, if we first of all enter the text in a (non-Tamil) script that has as many separate symbols as the Devanagari lipi (like Itrans, Harvard-Kyoto, or Unicode Latin with ISO 15919 Diacritics). Texts FIRST entered in a script like this can easily be changed into either Tamil lipi, Devanagari lipi or any other Indic script.If anyone is interested in being able to instantly change Indic Unicode scripts recently someone has come up with the fonts and macros for Microsoft Word that will perform these operations. This is a free package only for Windows Platform MS Word. To read about it and free download go to: http://www.uni-hamburg.de/Wiss/FB/10/IndienS/Kniprath/INDOLIPI/Indolipi.htm download it and follow the instructions.For those using other OS Platforms the included font from the above package e-Latin Indic.ttf can be installed on other platforms and is able to instantly transliterate Indic Unicode text into Latin with ISO 15919 Diacritics. So for those of you out there who do not know a particular script but do know English letters even if you don't use Windows you can still transliterate to Latin letters.adiyen dasanKesavan