Perhaps you've written a poem that could give Javed Akhtar a run for his money. Maybe you've sat through one of those soaps on TV that always have a name beginning with a 'K'; emotions are welling up within you and you need to let them out. Or it could just be that you want to quote a few beautiful lines from Devdas. No matter what you've got to share, there's likely to be a community in cyberspace that's waiting to discuss it threadbare.

By now online journals and Web logs have become the most popular ways by which you can create a thriving online community. While Indians have embraced blogging with great enthusiasm in the past few months, there is something amiss. Why isn't anybody writing in his or her native tongue yet? Blame it on lack of technology standards, lack of tutorials and, most troubling of them all, apathy.

Why bother?
What's the big deal, you ask? One answer is in the recent BBC report on the effect that Farsi blogs have had on freedom of expression in Iran. There are about 400,000 Netizens in Iran and over 5.5 million in India. We live in a more liberal environment and have greater access to technology. Isn't it ironical that there is not a single Indian language blog today? Several Iranian blogs have mushroomed in the last year, discussing social issues, politics and technology in addition to the general prattle. If that's not a revolution, what is?

Studies have shown that people are at their creative best when they express in the same language in which they think. That's why all the fuss to promote regional languages in schools. No doubt, publishing in local languages is quite an ordeal. Media companies can afford to hire professional translators and invest in proprietary software to publish books and magazines.

But when it comes to 'personal publishing', the textbook term for blogging, it is simply too difficult to get a Hindi blog up and running.

Well, you'll be glad to know that we're about to change all that right now. After this article, you will discover the freedom to blog with your poems and prose in almost any language!

What is Unicode? The official line at http://www.unicode.org says, 'Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language' Simply put, it is an international standard that recognises every character of every script in the world by a unique number. Any software or Web site that is designed to support Unicode will be able to reliably display local language content across diverse platforms, provided the appropriate Unicode font is installed on the systems. As a direct result of this standard, users will not need to buy or download proprietary fonts that are designed to work only with particular software or sites.

What makes this possible

The Internet cannot be a truly democratic medium unless everybody is able to draw upon the benefits of computers, irrespective of their comfort with English. This belief has gained momentum worldwide and is perceived as the key to bridging the digital divide.

One of the standards that are making this possible is Unicode. This standard can uniformly represent any character of any script of any language across any platform, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and even handheld devices.

What you'll need

Before you can launch a blog in a language of your choice, here's what you will need:

1. Unicode Devanagri font
   Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP come with font support for all Unicode scripts. Users of other operating systems will have to install the appropriate Unicode font first. For the purpose of this article, we will limit ourselves to Hinid. But feel free to try out whatever language suits you best. Raghu8 is a good Devanagari font that was developed by the National Centre for Software Technology. This 125 KB file is distributed for free by BBC Online. Another popular font is Code 2000, which supports all Indian languages in one single 2.8 MB file. To install a font, download one or both files and copy them into the c:\windows\fonts folder.
   
   
2. Unicode text editor
   To type your thoughts quickly, you need a software that supports Unicode and also offers a virtual keyboard interface for your language. SC UniPad is a free Unicode text editor that does the job. SC UniPad is not a word processor. It is not capable of formatting text or performing spell checks. It merely arranges Unicode characters in sequence so that you get a feel of what you're typing. To see the text in its correct form you will have to copy and paste on to a Web page or in software that understands Unicode.
   
   
3. Virtual keyboard
   The greatest deterrent to local language computing is lack of standard software that offers keyboard support. That shouldn't bother you, though. Download (IE users, right click and 'Save Target As'; Netscape users, right click and 'Save Link As') the easy-to-learn virtual Hindi keyboard that we've created for you and save it in any folder on your hard disk.
   
   
4. A Web log
   If you want to create your own journal and a community around it, you need to sign up with a web logging site that supports Unicode. One such site is Live Journal. Before you can register, Live Journal requires that new users get an invitation code from existing users. With over 500 Indian users, it shouldn't be too hard to get invited. But if you still need a code, write to me at msram@livejournal.com.

1. Launch SC UniPad.
   
   
2. Load the virtual keyboard by clicking Keyboard > Load from the menu bar and selecting the file that you just downloaded. Some letters are visible upfront and some are seen when SHIFT is pressed. And typing a combination of letters and matras creates a few other letters.
   
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3. Compose the text in SC UniPad. Take some time to get familiar with the keyboard layout. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours' practice to master it.
   
   
4. When you are ready to make an entry, log in to Live Journal. Copy the text from SC UniPad and paste it into Live Journal. Then click Update Journal. You can add standard HTML formatting as required.
   
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5. Now load your journal's URL in a browser and your first Hindi entry should be visible.
   
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6. Take a bow! :-)

Mahesh Shantaram is learning Hindi with the help of his wife.
Read his journal at http://www.techrose.org