Google Indic is difficult to handle!

If I have to type something in Malayalam, usually to post something on Koottam, a Social Community Network for Keralites that runs on Ning, I go straight off to Google Indic Transliteration Feature. Google Indic was a great feature from Google, as it was easy to use unlike many Transliteration Applications available online. What I loved the most about Google Indic was its ability to let me edit the text, helping me with suggestions, in case my transliteration went wrong. Where Google Indic suggested the possible words for a combination of English alphabets, it used to have an “Edit” option in the earlier version of Indic. I would enable the “Edit’ Option, start typing the word and Google Indic would then come up with possible Malayalam alphabets that could be created using a combination of English alphabets. My spelling never went wrong, as I had great control over what i wrote.

Yesterday, Google India’s Bangalore Team announced the launch of a new and improved version of Google Indic. It looks like Google Indic is going global. They have added all sorts of features to the improved version of Google Indic from Text Formatting to Unicode Character Picker. It supports seventeen languages: Arabic,Bengali, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi,Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. It is a great tool still. However, one key feature is missing.

Google India took away the one feature that made me stick to Google Indic, making it similar to the rest of the Transliteration Applications available online. It just took away the “Edit” feature. Now, it is like I am struggling like a five year old to figure out the right English Alphabet combination to produce the desired Malayalam Equivalents. True, Google Indic gives me a Unicode Character Picker to figure out the alphabets. But it takes a pretty long time for me to figure out what goes where. The Edit Feature used to make it very easy. I just had to click on it and start typing and Google Indic used to tell me different combinations I could use. I wish Google India brought the Edit feature back to Google Indic!