# Tamil legacy encodings API

> Old Tamil text that shows as accented Latin letters, to Unicode and back.

Before Unicode, Tamil was stored in 8-bit encodings that only looked like Tamil in one particular font; anywhere else the same text shows as characters like ¾Á¢ú. This converts such text to Unicode and Unicode back to it, moving the vowel signs that those encodings write before the consonant. TSCII 1.7 is offered now; TAB, TAM and Bamini are planned. The tables are written from the published standard.

Base URL `https://api.dharun.dev`. No API key. Answers are JSON, `{ "data": ..., "meta": { ... } }`, and errors are `{ "error": { "code", "message" } }` with a matching HTTP status. Rate limit: 600 requests a minute per client.

## Convert Tamil text

`GET /v1/tamil-font/convert`, also `POST`

Give the text as it looks without its font (the Windows-1252 characters), or POST the raw bytes as application/octet-stream. Converting to an 8-bit encoding answers with the same kind of text, and with the bytes in base64. Bytes the encoding does not assign are counted in undefined; characters it has no code for are listed in unmapped.

POST body: The text, or with Content-Type application/octet-stream the raw bytes. Send it as `text/plain`, or as JSON `{"text": "..."}` with the other options beside it.

What you send is never written to the log, and the answer is not cached.

Parameters:

- `text` (query): The text (or POST it).
- `from` (query, required): What the text is in. One of: unicode, tscii.
- `to` (query): What to convert to. Default unicode; one of from and to must be unicode. One of: unicode, tscii.

Example: https://api.dharun.dev/v1/tamil-font/convert?from=tscii&text=%C2%BE%C3%81%C2%A2%C3%BA+%C3%85%C2%BD%C3%AC%C2%B8%C3%B5

Response:

```json
{
  "data": {
    "from": "tscii",
    "to": "unicode",
    "text": "தமிழ் வணக்கம்"
  },
  "meta": {}
}
```

## Encodings offered

`GET /v1/tamil-font/encodings`

The encodings that can be converted, with fonts that use each, to help recognise what a text is in.

Example: https://api.dharun.dev/v1/tamil-font/encodings

Response, with lists and long text shortened:

```json
{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "tscii",
      "name": "TSCII 1.7",
      "about": "Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange: most Tamil web pages and mail from 1997 to the mid-2000s, and the Project Madurai library.",
      "fonts": [
        "TSCu_Paranar",
        "TSCu_InaimathiTSC",
        "TSC_Avarangal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "note": "Convert with /v1/tamil-font/convert, from or to any of these and unicode."
  }
}
```