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Language Switching

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You may often find the need to intersperse English words with Indic Language text or otherwise quickly switch languages momentarily in an application (such as if you want to save a document you've been working on with an English filename).

In the Desktop version of Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool, this is made easy by the keyboard shortcuts for switching languages. Unless you have specifically changed this setting via the Control Panel, the left Alt+Shift (left Alt is the Alt key to the left of the spacebar) shortcut can be used to quickly switch languages without having to move the mouse to the Language Bar and click on another language.

Further, you can define your own shortcuts to switch to a particular language as follows (reproduced from the FAQs):

On Windows XP

  1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Regional and Language Options.
  2. On the Languages tab, under Text services and input languages, click Details.
  3. Under Preferences, click Key Settings to see/edit language bar keyboard shortcuts.

On Windows Vista/Windows 7

  1. Click Start and go to Control Panel.
  2. Click Change keyboards or other input methods under Clock, Language and Region.
  3. On the Keyboards and Languages tab, click Change Keyboards.
  4. Select the Advanced Key Settings tab to see/edit language bar keyboard shortcuts.

You may also prevent a word from being transliterated by either hitting Esc to dismiss the list of suggestions or by manually selecting the original English spelling from the list (it appears above the first option, so that you can press the Up arrow key to quickly select it).

In the Web version you may use the Ctrl+M keyboard shortcut to toggle transliteration or hold down the Shift key when you press Space or Enter at the end of a word to prevent just that word from being transliterated.

We hope you find these tips useful. As always, your feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Rahul.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 17, 2010
    Hi, Thanks for this post. I got idea about language switching. It is really useful. Tnx... Best, Jahz