Siddham & Ranjana Keyboard

- Portable Edition: Siddhamkey3 Portable.zip

- Setup Package: Siddhamkey3 Setup.zip

Download Siddham and Ranjana font: CBETA Download Page

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To use Siddhamkey 3.0, you must install 3 fonts: Siddam, Ranjana and Arial Unicode MS.
1. Siddam and Ranjana fonts are for displaying Siddhaṃ and Lantsa letters. These fonts can be found on the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) website.
2. Arial Unicode MS font is for displaying Devanāgarī and IAST transliteration (also known as ISO 15919 transliteration). This font can be installed from the Microsoft® Office Setup CD by choosing the following options: Office Shared Features > International Support > Universal font or you can find it on the internet.

Run Siddhamkey 3.0, the main dialog box will appear in the center of the screen and the icon will display on the system tray. After closing the main dialog box, you can click on the icon again to open it.

There are four command buttons on the main dialog box:
1. Siddhamkey: Open the bar for inputting Siddhaṃ characters.
2. Lantsakey: Open the bar for inputting Lantsa (Ranjana) characters.
3. Dictionary: An updatable dictionary.
4. Converter: Open the dialog box for converting Siddhaṃ script from the clipboard to Devanāgarī, Lantsa or Romanized transliteration.

1. SIDDHAMKEY BAR

The Input Bar is used for sending Siddhaṃ characters directly into Microsoft Word or other programs.

For applications other than MS Word, you should use Expand button to open the textbox. After sending Siddhaṃ characters to the intermediate textbox, you copy them to the clipboard then paste into your document.

On the Input Bar, you type the Sanskrit Romanized characters by following the Input Method Table below:

Vowels:

Consonants:

For example, to get the Siddhaṃ character

We type:   n,dhaah.    or    n`dhaah.    or     `ndhaa.h

For sending characters into Microsoft Word or intermediate textbox, you can choose one of the following ways:
- Click the mouse directly on the Siddhaṃ character on the square button.
- Use Tab key to move and choose the Siddhaṃ character.
- Use one of the function keys for F1 to F12 to choose the Siddhaṃ character above.

In case there are more than 12 characters on the inputbar, click on the ">"/ "<" button OR use PageDown/PageUp key to go to the next/previous page.

Hot keys for opening and closing input bar: Ctrl-UpArrow, Ctrl-DownArrow

2. LANTSAKEY BAR

The Lantsakey Bar can input letters in the Lantsa script in the same way as the Siddhamkey Bar (see above).

3. CONVERTER

To use this function, first copy Siddhaṃ text from any document (the Siddhaṃ text must be in the CBETA font format). Then click on the Transliteration button. All Siddhaṃ characters will be converted to Romanized transliteration. Do the same to convert Siddhaṃ to Devanāgarī or Lantsa, but click on the Devanagari or Lantsa button instead of Transliteration button.

3. DICTIONARY

Siddhamkey 3.0 contains a custom dictionary which can be rebuilt or updated by using the Microsoft Access program. For the Sanskrit to English sample dictionary, there are two methods of searching. The first method involves inputting Sanskrit as Devanāgarī. You may either paste Devanāgarī into the <enter native scripts> box, or you may use the input buttons (in the character board). Then click the "OK" button. Then click on the word at the right to get an English translation.

The second way to enter Sanskrit is to paste IAST transliteration into the <enter transliteration> box. Or you may follow the 'Input Method Table' in the "SIDDHAMKEY BAR" section above to type in the transliteration box.

Before entering a new Sanskrit word, you can double-click in the 'native scripts' box or 'transliteration' box to clear the old text in each box.

You can combine different kinds of dictionary into this dictionary (for example Sanskrit to English, Pali to English, Tibetan to English, Hindi to English, etc.) by working with the siddhkey.mdb file (Microsoft Access format). After installing the Setup package, this file will be in Program Files > Siddhamkey directory.

Siddhamkey 3.0 runs on Windows® platform only.