TAM (TamShakti) — Built for an Era of Expensive Storage
TAM, marketed under the name TamShakti, dates from a period when computer memory and disk space were expensive enough that encoding efficiency was a real design constraint, not an afterthought. That shows in the encoding itself: TAM packs Tamil characters into fewer bytes than most other legacy encodings and reuses digit characters for some Tamil glyphs rather than spreading everything across the alphabetic range — a space-saving choice that made sense given the hardware limitations of its era, and one that also makes TAM-encoded files a little more compact than a Bamini or Vanavil file of the same Tamil text.
Recognising TAM-Encoded Text
Three signals set TAM apart from the ASCII-letter garble typical of Bamini or SenTamil:
- Digits appear mixed in among letters in the garbled output — TAM assigns some Tamil glyphs to numeral codes, not just alphabetic ones.
- Symbols like
~,^, and|show up scattered through the text more often than in other legacy encodings. - The garbled text looks noticeably shorter than you'd expect for the amount of Tamil it represents, a side effect of TAM's byte-saving character packing.
If you're unsure, paste the text into FontConvertor.in and try TAM as the source — correct Tamil script confirms the encoding.
Converting TAM to Unicode
- Open FontConvertor.in/font-converter.
- Set the Source Font to TAM.
- Set the Target Font to Unicode (UTF-8).
- Paste your TAM-encoded text — the Unicode output appears instantly.
- Copy or download as .txt or .docx.
Going the Other Way — Unicode to TAM
Some older accounting or record-keeping software built in the TAM era can still only import TAM-encoded text. To produce that output: set Source Font to Unicode (UTF-8), Target Font to TAM, paste your modern Tamil text, and copy the TAM-encoded result. You'll need the original TamShakti font installed on the destination system for it to display correctly there — Unicode-to-legacy conversion produces the right byte sequence, but rendering still depends on having that specific font.
Working With Legacy Tamil Data Programmatically
If you're normalising a database or dataset that stores Tamil in TAM encoding rather than converting a single document, the FontConvertor.in REST API exposes the same TAM ↔ Unicode conversion logic used on this page, so batches of records can be converted without pasting text through the browser interface one at a time.
Batch Converting TAM Files
For multiple TAM documents, use the Bulk Converter — upload several .txt or .docx files, select TAM as the source, Unicode as the target, and download every converted file as a single ZIP.
FAQ
Is TAM the same as TamShakti? Yes — TamShakti is the font's marketed name; TAM is the encoding's common shorthand.
My document mixes TAM and Unicode text. Will conversion break the Unicode parts? No — Unicode sections pass through unchanged during TAM-to-Unicode conversion.