Are you a Bengali? Yes? Then you will get something interesting here. This page refers to a set of utilities for writing Bengali text.
| This is a utility that converts a text written in Roman to a text in Bengali. The program puts images one after another corresponding to the desired letters. The output can be viewed in any web browser. Files can be printed after saving them in PostScript. The current documentation is insufficient. |
A tutorialDownload |
| BWTI is a package for writing Bengali text using TeX or LaTeX. It consists of METAFONT files for the definition of the Bengali alphabet and a style file for transliterating English texts to the Bengali format. The current version of BWTI is 3.0. The style file distributed with this version works well with TeX and LaTeX2.09. For LaTeX2e use the style file of the following link. |
DownloadStyle file for LaTeX2e |
| The bengali font in the X11 bitmap distribution format (BDF). These fonts can be used for X11 windows applications. Browsers capable of loading user-defined fonts (for example, Netscape 3.0 onwards) can display html files in Bengali using these fonts. |
More infoDownload |
| The bengali font as PostScript Type 1 font (gsf format). These fonts can be used for printing Bengali text in a PostScript printer. The PostScript previewer (ghostscript) allows conversion of these files to printer files for a wide range of printers. |
More infoDownload |
| Another converter from text to html. It essentially provides a transliteration scheme for converting romanized Bengali text. In conjunction with the X11 fonts, the output html files can be viewed in a browser capable of loading user-defined fonts. |
More infoDownload |
| An experimental Bengali text editor. Requires X11 fonts. Runs on any X11 window system having the Tcl/Tk shell wish. Allows conversion of Bengali text files to html, LaTeX and PostScript. Also provides an on-line transliterator for converting roman text to Bengali. Limited text-processing capabilities have also been added. An interface for sending bengali documents through e-mail is also provided. |
More infoDownloadUser's manual in PostScript (for an older version) |
| A program for sorting Bengali text files written according to the BW font encoding. It reads multiple text files and sorts the concatenated list linewise. Supports interactive mode. |
More infoDownload |
| Utility for displaying large Bengali banners in a text-only terminal. Supports banners of five different sizes. Provides a transliteration scheme for inputting text in 7-bit ASCII. |
More infoDownload |
| Web interface | TeX interface | X11 fonts | PS fonts | bn2html | bwedit | bwsort | bnbanner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independent application | Version 1.0 | Independent application | |||||
| Version 2.1 | Version 1.0 | Version 1.0 | Version 1.0 | Versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 | |||
| Version 3.0 | Version 1.1 | Version 1.1 | No longer supported | Versions 1.4, 1.5, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 3.0 | Version 1.0 |
A blank entry in the above table indicates that the compatible version of the corresponding package is not available.
The character encoding is the same for all the packages in the last row. The TeX encoding was different from the X11 and PS encodings for previous versions.
Finally here are the dependency relationships among the BW components.
| Component | Depends on |
|---|---|
| Web interface | Independent |
| TeX interface | Independent |
| X11 fonts | Independent |
| PS fonts | Independent |
| bn2html | X11 fonts |
| bwedit | TeX interface, X11 fonts, PS fonts |
| bwsort | Independednt but assumes the encoding of TeX interface, X11 fonts, PS fonts |
| bnbanner | Independent |
Thus if you want to upgrade bwedit to version 1.4, you should have version 3.0 of the TeX interface, version 1.1 of the X11 fonts and version 1.1 of the PS fonts installed in your machine. Note that bn2html is no longer supported, but the old version continues to work with the new X11 font files. On the other hand, bwsort works with older X11 and PS files, but not with the older versions of the TeX interface.
| Component | Usability |
|---|---|
| Web interface | Though this is based on the HTTP protocol which is platform-independent, certain web-browsers for MS windows are insensitive to the case of file names. As far as I know the Internet Explorer (IE) falls under this category. This means that IE cannot distinguish between, for example, T.gif and t.gif. A renaming of the gif files representing Bengali characters has to be done to avoid this problem and it has not been done yet. I do not rate the web inteface to be a really useful or practical utility. |
| TeX interface | This is truely a platform-independent utility, but you need some distribution of TeX/LaTeX installed and running on your machine in order to use the METAFONT and style files. Though (La)TeX distributions are available for almost all platforms, Microsoft users do not usually buy/install/use them. In that case it is seemingly a better idea to buy True-Type Bengali fonts from vendors (or to use some free fonts) that are directly usable with more popular word processors like MS Word etc. than to buy LaTeX and then download the free Bengali fonts available from this page. On the other hand, if you already have LaTeX, you may try the BWTI fonts. |
| X11 fonts | As the name suggests these fonts are usable with X windows only. There are many X windows simulators available for MS windows. Some of these simulators even allow you to add BDF fonts of your choice. I tried some of these utilities and found that in NO cases the resulting converted font files are recognizable by MS windows. If your simulator makes it work, it is fine, but my hunch is that the chances are rather slim. It is not really a problem with BDF-to-FON conversion, but with the recognition of the resulting FON files. It is unclear to me what the source of the problem is. I acknowkedge with sincere thanks any suggestion/remedy for this problem. |
| PS fonts | These are again fonts in another platform-independent format, but non-technical users do have very little to do with playing with PS fonts. PS fonts are normally used for generating PostScript files for printing and are not meant for everyday word processing!! |
| bn2html | This utility generates HTML files following the encoding of the X11 BW fonts. If these fonts themselves make little sense to you, so does bn2html. |
| bwedit | This is a Bengali text editor based on the X11 fonts and their encoding. If you are unable to add the X11 fonts to your system, don't even read further. For taking printouts either the TeX interface or the PS file must already be installed in your machine. Since encoding of the Bengali alphabet is not yet standardized, the text files produced by bwedit look heaps of junks when viewed with a font file following a separate encoding. Finally note that bwedit is a Tcl/Tk script, however MS windows versions of Tcl/Tk are freely downloadable. |
| bwsort | This is a plane C program and should be compilable on your MS machines. But the sorting algorithm assumes the BW encoding and, therefore, makes no sense if you do not have support for the encoding. |
| bnbanner | This is a program absolutely independent of any encoding or font and is thus usable on any platform, but you must have Perl Version 5 or upwards running on your machine. |
Well then! BW means almost nothing to MS Windows users. But MS Windows being seemingly the most popular platform, you would certainly get utilities for typesetting/printing/sorting in Bengali. Even in the freeware domain. But X windows equivalents of these programs are truely a rare species. This page has got some meaning then!!
Best of luck!