In mid-2005, Unicode consortium had decided to have special encoding for Malayalam chillu characters.
To type Chillu characters one needs to type ZWJ – Zero Width Joiner character. To type this, one needs to press Ctrl+Shift+1 in Windows.
Refer to table below to see how to type all the Chillu characters in your Desktop Applications using Lipikaar.
| Chillu Characters | How to Type them |
|---|---|
| MALAYALAM LETTER CHILLU N – ന് | NA(ന) + VIRAMA(്) + ZWJ(ctrl+shift+1) |
| MALAYALAM LETTER CHILLU NN – ണ് | NNA(ണ) + VIRAMA(്) + ZWJ(ctrl+shift+1) |
| MALAYALAM LETTER CHILLU RR – ര് | RA(ര) + VIRAMA(്) + ZWJ(ctrl+shift+1) |
| MALAYALAM LETTER CHILLU L – ല് | LA(ല) + VIRAMA(്) + ZWJ(ctrl+shift+1) |
| MALAYALAM LETTER CHILLU LL – ള് | LLA(ള) + VIRAMA(്) + ZWJ(ctrl+shift+1) |
UPDATE: The latest version of Lipikaar Typing Software for Windows (version 9.0) supports chillu characters in the standard mapping. You no longer need to use the above key combination to enter it.
Refer to the following link to see the mapping – http://www.lipikaar.com/desktop/help/how-to-type-in-malayalam