One of the useful utilities made available to the users of the IITM software is the conversion program tconvert which can convert text prepared in some of the familiar transliteration formats into a .llf file. The resulting .llf file may be edited using the Multilingual Editor for minor corrections if required. Once in the .llf format,  the other utilities may be used to obtain html, pdf or gif files for easy display on a web page. tconvert is available for use under Microsoft Windows as well as Linux. Both command line and GUI versions are available for use under Windows. The Linux version is useful for online conversion of transliterated text for deployment form web servers.

  tconvert may be invoked by clicking on its icon. When invoked, it will display a small window allowing the user to select the file to be converted and also specify an output file. If needed, a viewer for the .llf file may also be brought up to see the results immediately.  The image below shows the contents of a Windows desktop captured after invoking tconvert.

 
  tview, a special version of tconvert, will correctly transliterate from one of five different transliteration schemes. These are, ITRANS, RIT, ADHAWIN, MYLAI and KOELN. Please refer to the section on transliteration schemes for a detailed discussion of the schemes. In order that tconvert correctly identify the transliteration scheme and the script in which the output is required, a special convention has been introduced. The very first line of text in the file to be transliterated should carry the required identification of the scheme and the script. This is seen clearly in the image shown, the file being Ganesha.itx an ITRANS file, and the script/language for display is Sanskrit. The general form of the line is

% <language> <scheme>

where language refers to one of the script names accepted by the IITM software and scheme is one of the five mentioned above. In the image above, Ganesha.itx has been transliterated into a file called def.llf and the result viewed using "lb", the viewer included with the multilingual editor. 

   The first line referred to as the Header is mandatory. The preferred language for ITRANS may be any one of the languages supported by ITRANS. Multilingual documents in ITRANS should also get converted to their appropriate scripts. Embedded Roman script will however be retained as such.  The preferred language for RIT is TELUGU and for the last three schemes, TAMIL. "lb" will allow the output to be viewed in other scripts as well.

   The software is expected to convert reasonably accurately but it must be emphasized that full conformance to every possible representation of the aksharas, as specified in the different schemes may not be guaranteed. 

  The nice feature of tconvert is that form one copy of ITRANS a single .llf file is obtained and this file may be viewed in any of the scripts dynamically. Also you will be able to edit the output using the IITM multilingual editor, should minor changes be called for.

Using tconvert as an external viewer in your browser

 Viewers may setup their web browsers to show a transliterated file using tconvert. Set up the browser to handle the external application as follows. 

Mime type  application/x-llang
viewer  application/x-llang  tconvert %s

  The %s will tell the browser that the received file should be passed as an an argument to tconvert. 

  This would however require that such files should include a header as the first line of text so that tconvert may correctly identify the scheme and the script to be used in the display.

Sample Files in different schemes

  Viewers may download the following files and convert them on their systems using tconvert. Please keep the shift key pressed as you click on the link to let your browser save the file on your system.

Nehru's words : an ITRANS Hindi document 
Ganesha Stotra in ITRANS, Sanskrit 
Some of Bharathi's works in Tamil (Mylai)
Telugu text in RIT

1. tconvert is a utility and not an editor. It is provided along with the IITM Multilingual Editor so that users may convert and view text in different transliteration formats with the Editor.

2. tconvert was designed to help those who might have prepared (in the past) many ITRANS , ADHAWIN or RIT files which they may want displayed in Indian scripts on a web page.

3. tconvert can convert an ITRANS file into a special format called .llf standardized at IIT Madras. A .llf file may be converted into a PDF file or an html file using other utilities available from IIT Madras. Thus a simple two step process can help display thousands of existing ITRANS files, all in proper Indian scripts.

4. tconvert.exe is a win32 application meant for use on a Windows system. A version for Linux (ELF Binary) is also available. 
 
 

Download tconvert.zip
(for Win98/2000/XP systems)

Installation instructions

1. download tconvert.zip and unzip it using winzip or equivalent program. The resulting tconvert.exe is the executable.

2. copy tconvert.exe into the directory where the multilingual editor was installed. This is usually c:\Program Files\IITM Software\

3. Make a shortcut for the application.

4. invoke it by clicking on the icon.

5. The browse option will allow you to specify both input and output file names.

6. The viewer program "lb" will be required to be present in the same directory as tconvert, for viewing the converted text. "lb" is included in the IITM Editor package. Please copy "lb" as appropriate. "lb" is not required for conversion and is needed  only if you wish to view the converted file.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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