The standalone vowel characters which are on the keyboard will produce that character and will not combine with consonants.
This is the case whether the vowel component appears to the left or right of, above or below the consonant. Moving the cursor to the left of a combinant character and pressing Delete will erase the whole character, but if you move the cursor to the right of a combinant and press Backspace, only the vowel component will be erased. This means that while two (or more) keystrokes are required to display most consonant-vowel combinants, when you use the arrow keys to move the cursor through the text, only a single keystroke is needed to move past each character.
The majority of characters are typed using a combination of keystrokes.Īlthough many Tamil characters are typed using separate keys for consonants and components, the characters that appear on screen will be combinants, which the computer sees as a single character.
The visible keyboard layout consists of the eighteen consonants க ங ச ஞ ட ண த ந ப ம ய ர ல வ ழ ள ற ன, the five Grantha consonants and SRii ஸ ஷ ஜ ஹ க்ஷ ஸ்ரீ, eleven vowels அ ஆ இ ஈ உ ஊ எ ஏ ஐ ஒ ஓ, a range of vowel components and combinants characters, and the Pulli ் and Aytham ஃ marks, as well as various punctuation marks.
