Project Madurai is an open, world-wide initiative
devoted to preparation & free distribution of ETexts of Tamil Literary Works led by in Switzerland and Kumar Mallikarjunan in USA
Viewing Tamil Fonts at Project Madurai
Guidelines I. to view web/html version of TSCII based etxts (Windows OS): a) make sure that your computer has a TSCII (version 1.7) compliant font installed in your computer. These fonts have the generic name TSCxxxx where xxxx stands for the fontface name TSCinaimathi, TSCmaduram etc. You can download these fonts here. b) open the font preferences section of your web browser and select any TSCII font as the default font for use with the "user-defined" encoding case. save the settings before leaving the preferences setting window. c) select "user-defined" case for display of the webpage (charset options are usually under view menu) before downloading the TSCII webpage. Reload the webpage if necessary.
II. to view Unicode based etexts in Windows OS: Tamil Unicode is given system-level support in Windows XP/2000 OS but you need to "enable" it before you can use it. For this, you need to do the following: On Windows XP:  Click on "Start->Control Panel->(Date, Time, Language and Regional Options)->Regional and Language Options"
Click on 'Languages' tab (next to 'Regional Options') at the top
In 'supplemental language support', tick the "Install files for Complex Script and right to left languages (including Thai)" and install the required files.
Windows XP CD may be required for the above process.
On Windows 2000 Click on 'Start->Settings->Control Panel->Regional Options'
Click on 'General' tab
You will see a list of languages under 'Language Settings for the system'. Scroll down the list to tick 'Indic'. Windows 2000 CD may be required for the above process.
Windows XP and Windows 2000 System files contain a Tamil Unicode font called "latha" that can be used to view Tamil Unicode texts. On Windows ME, Windows 98 Though Win98/ME does not support Tamil Unicode at OS level, Tamil Unicode texts can be viewed on these systems provided you have at least one unicode font (covering the Tamil range) in the system and also the Uniscribe processor/font rendering engine (named usp10.dll) is present in the system. [one of the sites for this download is here . Alternatively, you may download the file from the Microsoft site here - save the downloaded .exe file - double click on the file - give a temporary folder address - the program will extract a few files into the folder - of these 'usp.zip' is the one you will need - discard the other files - unzip usp.zip - it will give two files viz: usp10.dll and readme.txt ] III. Viewing Tamil Etexts in Apple Macintosh Computers On Mac OS 9.x and Mac OS X (upto 10.3): You need to have a TSCII-based or Tamil Unicode font (e.g. Arial Unicode or Code2000) installed in your computer and follow the procedure given above to set up the web-browser to use "user-defined" encoding/charset. Place the new fonts in the "Fonts" folder of the "Library" folder in your home folder (~/Library/Fonts/) and restart the computer for the system to be able to use the Tamil fonts.
On Mac OS 10.4: As with Win XP/2000, Mac OS 10.4 provides system level support for Tamil Unicode. You need to enable Tamil by opening up the "System Preferences >International" menu and enable "Tamil".
IV. Locating etext of a specific Tamil Work: Chronological, Classified Indices and Search Engines for Project Madurai etexts are available here You may also use Google search by typing the name of the work directly in Tamil Unicode to find the unicode version.
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