पहिले मराठी पाउल .. (the first marathi step)

मेरा भारत महान. आपली बोली आपला बाणा !

(translation: my india is great. our language our pride !)

This is my first attempt at blogging in my native tongue marathi. I ran into a few blogs already doing this, so i wont say i am the first. But i certainly hope many more people take up this idea. After all its so much more fun ..

So, for those of you who want to do this at the earliest possible. Here's what you need:

• A Unicode-enabled Operating System (i am using Windows 2000, so that and anything better should be good. I believe Linux should also be able to do just fine).
• For users using Microsoft Windows, you will also be wanting to download Baraha which lets you create documents in various Indian languages. I am using version 6.0 at the moment. Download and install the one that suits you.

Once you have installed Baraha

• you will note two icons on your desktop "Baraha 6.0" and "Baraha Direct 6.0" (note: the 6.0 is the version i have, yours may have a different number).
• Baraha is an independent application that lets you compose documents in your native language, which you can then copy-paste in your unicode-compliant application (MS-Outlook, webpage, browsers and what not).
• Baraha Direct, on the the other hand, when started runs as a tiny icon in your system tray (its that little square space near your system clock) and lets you type your native characters directly into your application instead of copy-pasting.
• If you are going to use Baraha Direct for the first time, make sure you have setup your default language (marathi, in my case) in the settings box that appears when you press F12.
• You can start/stop your keyboards from creating characters in your native language by pressing F11.

And yes, if you found this useful or think that there's a correction required, do add a comment to this post.

For those of you who would like to, do visit my मराठी blog called माझ्या चकाट्या. Meanwhile, आईश करा (enjoy)!