I first came to know of my dear Alec in September 2016. It all started with an email from Alec, as follows, on 20-Sep-2016.

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Dear Mr. Viswanathan,

I have recently discovered Azhagi+. Please accept my congratulations for producing such a useful piece of software.

My university has many staff and students who use languages of the Indian subcontinent. It is part of my job to see that all the necessary keyboard mappings are installed on our standard Windows desktops, and I have done so, but Azhagi+ is even better, because it is portable, which means that they can still type those languages, even on computers that have not been configured to use the normal keyboards. I am sure that they will find that very useful indeed. Many thanks!

I regret that I have no budget at all, so I cannot make a donation of money. However, I would like to donate some of my own work with Azhagi+, to benefit others.

Some years ago I created a keyboard layout (available on my personal webpage, below) to type many Latin-alphabet languages. With that, it is possible to type many languages (for example, English, French, German, Polish, Turkish, Old Icelandic, and Latin) all with the same simple “UK Enhanced” keyboard layout.

I have been experimenting, and have created a similar Azhagi+ mapping, which does the same job and is even easier to use. If you would like a copy of that layout, to make available to other users, I will be pleased to send it.

Of course, I intend to make that mapping available on my own webpage, but it seems polite to offer it to you first. I am very grateful for your program.

I am currently creating a layout for Ancient Greek, which uses many diacritics and is famously difficult to type. I have succeeded in creating an Azhagi+ layout that types all the Greek characters, but now I am trying to create another, which conforms to the BetaCode system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Code) which is used by many scholars. That is a little more difficult, because Azhagi+ does not seem to like some of the characters.

Is there a technical manual for Azhagi+, please?

I have looked on your website, and found a good deal of useful information, but not a formal manual.

Best wishes and thanks,

Alec

Alec McAllister
Multilingual Computing Co-ordinator
Central I.T. (formerly Information Systems Services)
University of Leeds
Leeds
West Yorkshire
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After the above introductory mail from Alec, we exchanged lots and lots of emails, paving the way for the creation of very many useful XML files by Alec. The wonderful thing was that only for a while, our correspondences remained purely technical. Thereafter, basically, our correspondences turned out to be natural carriers of Love and Affection. What else can I say? You can read more on it at alec-my-gratitude.php

Well, during our exchange of emails, time and again, dear Alec used to write greatly appreciative of Azhagi+. He would feel very thankful to Azhagi+ for helping him to easily put to use his mappings** and educate the others around him on the same. He used to share his joy and delight in seeing Azhagi+ being of much help to various staff, students and scholars in his University, to write in their desired scripts, ever so easily and swiftly. I reproduce hereunder select extracts from one of his past emails (dt. 10-May-2017) where he had shared one such moment of enthusiastic happiness.
(**) Alec was ever appreciative of Azhagi+ only, never talking about his own mappings, which only formed the robust foundation actually. The intuitiveness in the mappings was the key factor, as such. I know what an extremely strenuous and monumental effort is needed to think out and create such intuitive mappings, meticulously laid out and documented! But, he never talked about them. I, of course, used to write to him in full appreciation of the same, now and then, esp. for their enormous societal value.

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Last week, I demonstrated Azhagi to a colleague, Dr James Wilson, in our Russian department (... .. .).

James was extremely enthusiastic and full of praise for your software. He was very happy that it saves lots of time and effort in typing some of the difficult characters that are needed for Russian, Ukrainian, Czech and a variety of other languages that are taught here. ... .. . He was also pleased that Azhagi makes typing International Phonetic Alphabet symbols easy: inserting them by any other means can be a very slow, frustrating and error-prone process.

He sends you his congratulations and would like to use Azhagi in his research, writing and teaching, and to give copies of it to all his students, if you agree.

At his request, I have extended my Russian mapping (UKtoRussian, latest version attached) to include all the characters needed for all the Slavic languages that are written with the Cyrillic alphabet, so that mapping is now a sort of “Pan-Slavic” mapping. ... .. . ... .. . ... .. .

It was so pleasing to see James’s enthusiasm, and to hear how Azhagi can save the most precious commodity of all – time. James is a very nice fellow, and I wish you had been in our meeting. You would have felt so proud and pleased that your software can do so much good.

You already have much to be proud of, and it looks as if Azhagi will help even more people next academic year and thereafter. Please accept my congratulations – and James’s – on your excellent work.
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Best wishes to you and yours,

Alec.

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Whenever and wherever any user is happy (as above), I am doubly happy, considering Azhagi's immense societal value. And, for such societal value, All Glory and Thanks to the Lord Almighty only, for ever. Because, as I always feel/say/write, Azhagi is GOD's Own App. Not mine.

"Love is the ceaseless flow of divine effulgence. Sages called this Atma, the indwelling Divinity." - Beloved Baba