Bala's Blog

Indian Languages Input in Emacs

August 11 2018
126 words, ~1 min. read
emacs,  input,  tools 

So far, I have tried and used various text input methods for composing text content in Indian Languages. Depending on the approach, I had to depend on various tools - like ibus, Google Input Method Editor (IME), etc.

Recently, I learnt that Emacs has built-in support. After spending time to understand, found it was very simple and easy. For example, in order to type in Tamil, I did the following,

  1. Toggle input method (Hint: use C-x C-m C-\)
  2. Emacs will now prompt for the input method (Hint: press TAB to explore the available input methods)
  3. Enter the desired input method and press Enter (for example, tamil-itrans)
  4. Emacs will now setup the keyboard layout
  5. Enter the text

Note: In order to toggle the input methods, use C-\