iPLUGIN FAQ's

Q. Which development environment can I use?

Ans.: Development environment does not make a difference. For example in Interdev you “view the object as text”. Irrespective of which development is used, the object/embed tags need to be included in the html page. The required events need to be handled. This is apart from browser and OS detection code. Also the dependencies of CAB/exe need to be in relative paths. (refer sample files for more information).

Q. Which all browser are supported?

Ans.: We support Internet Explorer 4 to Internet Explorer 6 and Netscape 4 to Netscape 6.

Q. Are the downloadable components different for Internet Explorer & Netscape?

Ans.: Yes. They are different for both Internet Explorer and Netscape. For Internet Explorer the components are in the form of CAB files / automatic download. For Netscape the components are available as SETUP programs (EXE ) which needs to be downloaded and run at client. Both the solutions are one time downloads. .

Q. Will iplugin run in browsers other than Internet Explorer & Netscape?

Ans.: We do not support other browsers.

Q. Will iPlugin run in Netscape 6.0?

Ans.: The current verison of iPlugin will run on Netscape 6.0 also.

Q. How does the download happen? What amount of user intervention is required?

Ans.: Download takes few clicks of mouse. For IE, the user has to accept component download.
For Netscape he has to download ??Plugin.exe extract this file and run setup.exe. So for IE, its one click and for Netscape its one click and one double click.

Q. What shall be security settings in the browser etc.?

Ans.: Browser should be set to accept Signed ActiveX controls. This setting is only for IE. User should have rights to download and install program from the web.

Q. Any special settings required on the browser to run iplugin?

Ans.: Apart from security settings, nothing is required.

Q. Will iPlugin run in other applications?

Ans.: No! They are meant only for browser based applications i.e., web applications.

Q. What keyboard layouts are supported? Can the user have his preferred layout?

Ans.: Yes! Inscript, Phonetic and Typewriter are supported. Developer has to give choice to user and accordingly download the components. We are packaging components for all the three.

Q. Is the Floating keyboard supported in iPlugin?

Ans.: Yes, We have 11 language support through a single control over IE. Enables you to use mouse to type in Indian Languages. This comes as an Add-on feature.

Q. How the bilingual web font data can be converted to ISCII & Vice versa?

Ans.: Converters for ISCII2WISFOC & WISFOC2ISCII are included (packaged) in form of standard C dlls and ActiveX dlls (see sample code that comes along with the product).

Q. Will iPlugin support Unicode?

Ans.: Server-side ISCII2Unicode components are available with us as an add-on. If need be these can be provided and the data can be made available in Unicode

Q. In a Mailing application How will the recipient of an Indian Language mail will view the mail?

Ans.: 3 options are present.
A link to download Font may be given,
Use of dynamic font will solve this problem (For Web base emails only)
Send font as attachment.

Q. How does the Dynamic font work?

Ans.: They are downloaded by browser in Cache and browser will use these cached fonts for rendering the data. They work with IE 4+ and netscape 4+. However netscape 6+ does not support Dynamic fonts right now.

Q. Approximate time taken for converting ISCII strings to ISFOC and vice versa?

Ans.: In milliseconds. Statistics shows for an average ISCII string of 30 it takes 10ms for conversion.

Q. I don’t see the certificate if I run the page locally?

Ans.: We recommend using a web-server while developing. However if dependencies are present in the relative path the controls will work.

Q. What is the difference between ISFOC, Bilingual ISFOC, Web ISFOC and Bilingual Web ISFOC and are the convertes available for interchanging data among these?

Ans.: All these are basically font codes for variety of fonts provided for us. 

We have forward and reverse converters for ISCII to any of the ISFOC mentioned above. For interchanging data among these, one can change data to ISCII and from ISCII to desired ISFOC. 

Q. Why do we get a scripting error, when a page is loaded. What is the cause for this?

Ans.: This error basically happens because of the browser setting. The browser must be set to default settings if he is  not able to do so, uninstall IE and again reinstall it so that it is automatically set to default level. And still if doesn't work Go to settings and select Custom option and make Initialize and Script ActiveX controls not marked as safe "To prompt". This must solve the problem.

Q. How to test a page which uses iplugin.ocx?

Ans.:

For IE :-To do the testing on your test machines after following the procedure listed here : 

Remove following components from the machine you want to test the code.

Where ** will stand for the script mnemonics (e.g. DV for Devanagari).In case of any problems, report us with Gins.log generated on c:\ , code you are using, the machine configuration where problem is occurring and of course the problem description.

For Netscape:-

Q. I want to design a website in Indian languages using Servlets. What is the best solution available from C-DAC?

Ans.: iPlugin can be used for making an interactive Web site in Indian languages. As the dlls which goes along with iplugin is a C dll, you need to write a JNI code. And then it can be used in java.

Q. How do I enable English language for an existing web-page?

Ans.: iPlugin works only on Windows machines on client side. Place the following the object tags: iPlugin.ocx, iPlugin.lpk, ??Data.cab. Give relative paths and include the respective folders and cab files into your project folders. Set script, keyboard type and then call init() method of plugin when “window loads”. All these values are case sensitive. Refer Sample application for more info.

Q. How do I ensure that my components reach the client side?

Ans.: iPlugin® works only on Windows machines on client side. The installation procedures for IE and Netscape are different (CABS and ??Plugin.exe respectively). Also for IE there are some lines of html code which are required depending on OS (WinNT or Win9x). So it is essential to have a good OS and browser detection code in place. The web-server should be capable of delivering. Cabs and .exes to clients. Refer documentation of your web-server for more details. The “lpk path” and “code base” should be specified “relatively” to the source page.

Q. How do I find out if the fonts got installed on a client machine?

Ans.: Typically you see multiple funny characters (higher ASCII character) appearing when you press one key. This indicates that “Font Resource has not been accepted by user or the fonts have not got installed properly or “Font Family” parameter for the TextArea has been miss-spelt. You can also check by going to fonts folder of opening notepad and looking at list of fonts that are present.

Q. How do I find out if other components got installed on a client machine?

Ans.: Apart from the fonts for the selected language and the Netscape Plugin component (NPGils32.dll) all other components go into “system\iPlugin “ folder of the user.This happens for both IE as well as Netscape. NPGils32.dll goes into the Plugin folder of Netscape while fonts go in “windows\fonts” folder.

Q. How do I store the values/ text user enters in database?

Ans.: Your server gets Indian language data from the client just like it would get English data. However this data is WEB-ISFOC format. This format is not suitable for storing in database etc. as it is not possible to search or sort on this data. It also consumes a lot of space. Ideally Data should be stored in ISCII. Database servers like MS-SQL, Oracle, Ms-Access etc. can store this data in text field. Storing data in ISCII enables sorting, searching and transliteration. Storage space is reduced by at least 50% when you store ISCII. Depending on the language of the WEB-ISFOC call the converter on server side to change the data to ISCII and store it.

To display this stored data back to user you will have to convert it back to the WEB-ISFOC of the selected language. Also the Font-component for that language should have been accepted by the user. Refer to note xx (Form processing using iPlugin)

Q. How do I enable browser other than IE 4.0+ and Netscape 4.0+?

Ans.: Other browsers are not supported as of now.

Q. How do I enable English numerals on my page?

Ans.: Use *EN font family. At least one font in all languages uses English numerals. You can open notepad and try to see the name (??BW*.TTF) in fonts dialog or refer to chapter 4 for list of scripts, mnemonics, Class-ids and font names.
For more information on the product details contact us at info.gist@cdacindia.com and for support related queries contact us at support.gist@cdacindia.com

Tips for developers.

For troubleshooting iPlugin, click here.