Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

What is rit?

RIT stands for Rice Inverse Transliterator. rit is a program that takes Telugu text typed using English alphabet and English text and prints Telugu and English appropriately. rit assumes that you follow the Rice Transliteration Standard for representing Telugu using English alphabet.

Why "inverse" in the name "Rice Inverse Transliterator"?

When you type Telugu text using English alphabet, it is you who does the transliteration. rit takes the transliterated text and prints it in Telugu: it is the inverse operation of what you have done. That is, you transliterate and rit inverse transliterates.

Why Rice?

There is a university down south by that name. RIT was originally designed when one of us (Rama Rao) was a student at Rice.

In what way does it differ from other commercial word processors?

The most important difference is that RIT is public domain whereas you pay for the other programs. We have not tested or had any experience with commercial programs to give meaningful commentary. Some commercial programs (Rachana for example) do come with WYSIWIG telugu editor. At the moment we don't have any technical information about Rachan or any other word processor.

Will RIT ever be WYSIWIG?

We certainly hope so! At present it is not clear what should be the best way of achieving it. One plan is to port it to mule ( multi lingual emacs). The other plan is to write an entirely new program. Either way, considerable work is involved. If you like to join in, let us know.

Where do I get rit from?

ftp://sigma.bgsu.edu/pub/India/rit-3.0.tar.Z
or
ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/TeX/languages/indian/rit-3.0.tar.Z
or
ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/TeX/CTAN/languages/telugu/rit-3.0.tar.Z

What machines does it run on?

We have tested rit on unix. We believe that porting rit DOS and MAC platforms is very simple but we have not done it yet. If you plan to port rit to DOS or MAC platform please let us know. We'll be happy to help you. You need to have LaTeX installed on your machine. However, you don't need to know how to use LaTeX. However, regular LaTeX users will be able to use all the features of LaTeX with rit. You will ideally run rit on X (open) windows, although windows are required only to preview the documents before printing them.

How do I make RIT work in DOS?

There are several versions of TeX for DOS, EmTeX for example. Diehard unixers we are, we don't use DOS on a daily basis. If you use DOS on a frequent basis it should be very simple to port RIT to DOS. Please let us know if you you successfully port RIT to PC, we can make it public.

How do I make RIT work on a Mac

Again, the answer is the same as DOS. There are several versions of TeX for Mac, OZTeX for example. Please let us know if you have a working version available for Mac.

What is the difference between RIT-2.0 and RIT-3.0?

RIT-3.0 is a complete rewrite from RIT-2.0. RIT-2.0 used the fonts developed by Mukavilli Lakshmana Kumar for TeluguTeX. The TeluguTeX fonts were workable but were not of satifactory quality. Also the TeX macros used by TeluguTeX were very fragile and hence it was difficult to mix telugu characters with other capabilities of TeX.

RIT-2.0 completely does away with TeluguTeX. It uses a postscript font called potana developed by Desikachary. Also, the TeX macros are completely rewritten. You can mix almost any other capabilities of LaTeX with telugu.

RIT-2.0 attempted to detect English and Telugu words automatically. RIT-3.0 separates this translietration and spell-checking+automatic- detection into different modules. Actually spell checking is not yet ready with RIT-3.0. Ananda Kishore and Suresh Kolichala were working on it. It will probably be bundled in RIT-3.1.

What version of LaTeX and TeX do I need?

We recommend that you have at least TeX 3.14 and LaTeX 2.0.9. Also, we assume that you have dvips on your system to convert dvi files to postscript files.

Will RIT-3.0 work with NFSS and latex2e?

latex2e. However, we think it will be a while before system administrators install latex2e on their. We are planning to move over to latex2e in RIT 3.1. Handling multiple fonts was one of the latex's weaknesses. Latex2e handles multiple fonts much better. Once we move over to Latex2e, you should encounter fewer bugs.

I am a unix system administrator. How do I make RIT available to all the users

Our scripts are meant for users with no system administration privileges. However, it is a lot easier to install RIT if you have system administration privileges.

• Install the files in fonts/pk/,fonts/tfm/, and fonts/vf/ wherever they normall reside on your system. Ususally they are somewhere further down in '/usr/local/lib/tex/'. In some systems they are all in one directory. In some systems they are in different directories. The afm file is not really necessary for rit to run. However, some other word processors might require an afm file, if they want to use Potana outside rit.
• Install the ps/potana.pfa in a directory ( again, somewhere down under /usr/local/lib/tex/) where times-roman and other postscript .pfa (or .pfb) files are already installed.

• Append ps/telfonts.map to psfonts.map.

• Strip off all the environment variables from rit and ritx. Install all the files bin/, rit, and ritx in a publicly accessible directory.

• Move all the files inputs/ styles/ to wherever they reside on your system, usually /usr/local/lib/tex/inputs or /usr/local/lib/tex/macros.

I have this great looking font for Telugu. How do I make it work with RIT?

We wholeheartedly welcome porting new fonts to RIT. We will be happy to provide any assistance. Basically you need to write files similar to styles/potana.sty and inputs/ptncodes.tex. 'ptncodes.tex' is actually very simple to understand. You can probably modify it for a new font. Writing a file similar to potana.sty requires some expertise in TeX. Unfortunately, TeX is not an easy program and there doesn't seem to be any way around it.

Can I port fonts of other Indian languages also to RIT?

Yes, porting a font of any other language is exactly similar to porting a font of telugu. However, some Indian languages like Malayalam and Tamil have symbols which have no equivalent in Telugu. So RIT might have no way to produce these symbols.

What version of dvips do I need?

We have tested with dvips 5.516a and dvips 5.516. If you have an older version it may not find the directory containing postscript fonts. There are basically two flavors of dvips: dvips and dvipsk. To add to the confusion, both executables are called 'dvips'. The inportant point is RIT works with only 'dvips'. Here is a way to identify what is installed on your system. You are in trouble if after giving the dvips command you get a message of the sort:

This is dvipsk 5.516a Copyright 1986, 1993 Radical Eye Software
/usr/local/bin/dvips: ! Couldn't find header file tex.pro

On the other hand you are fine if you get a message like:

This is dvips 5.516a Copyright 1986, 1993 Radical Eye Software

The crucial thing is whether it is 'dvips' or 'dvipsk'.

OK, I don't have the right dvips. What do I do?

Get dvips5516.tar.z from ftp.cs.umn.edu:/pub/latex/software/dvips5516.tar.z

This file was present at that site at the time of writing this document. But things keep changing fast in the cyberworld. Here is how to find the latest ftp site with the help of 'archie'.

Do the following

1. telnet archie.funet.fi
2. login with the username 'archie'; no passwd reuired

3. Type 'prog dvips5516'

That will show you where dvips5516 is available all over the world.