Sunday, March 28, 2010

Silverlight 4 : Indic Support in Silverlight

Hope you all folks doing well and enjoying every bit of Silverlight 4 RC, After hell lot of work in weekdays and over weekend, finally I managed to open my Live Writer today and hopefully will start buzzing here from coming weeks again like I use to in earlier months.

I have already given inputs on Language feature/Support from Silverlight in my earlier post while it was in Beta.In that article, I talked about, How you can enrich your Silverlight Application with Arabic and Hebrew language support from Silverlight and I also talked about BiDi (Bi-Directional) / RTL – Right to Left feature.

This is now a sort of extension to that article and primary focus will be how you can add up Indic content to your Silverlight Application.

For this I am making use of Microsoft Tool itself, Yes ! I am talking about Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool, Though this is in Beta version, still it performs and sufficient for our development.

ILITWebpage_Title_394x112

You can download the Indic pack for your language from here :

http://specials.msn.co.in/ilit/

Once you install this, you will get the option bar on your status like this :

Indic

Now all you need is open your Silverlight Project and you are Ready to Develop Indic Silverlight Application like this :

Bengic

Hindic

So this is how with Indic Tool you can simply enter Data. So assuming some commercial application,here it will look like this :

Multic

Happy? :) .. I know now you can load your apps with local language and being Indian I know the advantages too :), Well In our country (India) we have multiple languages and normally people speak more than two, So I guess this feature is unique to people of India.

This all looks good ! But what about Business applications??

Yeah ! A scary question ! But simple answer you can see below in Design + Code + Error handle. I am showing how it can be use in DataGrid if you are thinking about it from Business application point of View, check this out :

Design :

indicDesign

Code : Data Binding + Error Message

CodeCoverIndic

Output :

IndicOP

Data Entry At Runtime in Indic :

CropIndic

Error Messages :

Errorindic

So? I am sure you got all answers to your questions, rather more than that. Well So for Indic Development in Silverlight, All you need is your Basic Silverlight Skill + Either MS Indic Tool or any third party (I will prefer MS Indic Tool) and you are ready with Indic !

How it Works ??

Ah ! here comes Chapter 1 :) , well since I am writing this post as extension to earlier, Let me tell you how all this work.

  • Silverlight does not download fonts automatically.
  • It rely on font support on the system.
  • You can download your own fonts in the XAP for stylistic reasons.

So, Here is my first Indic attempt !

SLSarkar

Wait is Over..Start Silverlight..Start Indic..Talk in your regional language with Silverlight !

For this post, I am very much thankful towards Mr. Pavanja from India for taking this demand of Indic Support in Silverlight over Microsoft Connect and Thanks a ton to Team Silverlight for such a wonderful gift of Indic Support in Silverlight !

Vikram.