[glug-t] Re: Tamil in GNU/Linux

Dear friend,
Sorry for the late reply.
Please find my reply quoted below.

Muthiah Annamalai wrote:

>How do you use Tamil language with programs in GNU/Linux.
>How to edit/create/rename programs in Tamil.
>  
>
with recent versions of Gnome and KDE, Tamil is well supported in all 
distributions. You have told that you have mandrake 9.1. The tamil 
support is improved in MDK 9.2. KDE also support tamil in Mandrake 10 
(If you dont have the CDs, tell me). Mandrake gives two type faces, 
among which phonetic typewriter is not present (i mean a for 'a' and aa 
for 'aa'). Let me explain you how to enable tamil support in mandrake.

At the time of installation:
You can select tamil in addition with english in the languages list
choose your appropriate toggle key
Nothing else, the packages will be automatically installed.

I have choosen right control as my toggle key. So when ever i press 
right control, there will be an intimation (Scroll-lock glows) in your 
keyboard saying that your computer is ready to type in tamil.

With no second thought, we will follow UTF-8 format since it is an 
approved one. By typing in UTF-8 (Unicode format) you are overcoming the 
OS and character coding dependencies. UTF is universally accepted.

Though tamil support is widely supported, the font designers havent 
given enough fonts which suit our requirement. please choose 
TSCu_Paranar (it will co-incides with arial/helvetica) which is 
supported by all applications.

---
If you consider Fedora,
It gives you a variety of keyboard layouts like typewriter, phonetic etc.
But fedora is not coming with fonts. you may have to install tamil 
fonts. (so simple. just create a .fonts folder in your home, and paste 
all those fonts. you can download some of the fonts from my website, 
http://barathee.beigetower.org ) also tamil fonts are available as RPMs. 
please make a search in google. I hope debian also tamil enabled.

Ofcourse, you have to search for the input language and toggle key 
options for tamil. I couldnt recall them now.

>Please tell me some free software, that can transliterate
>typed text into TAMIL.
>  
>
I dont know such thing is available in GPL. But I found some converters 
online like
www.jaffnalibrary.com/tools

>And please tell me, if I use UTF-8 encoding [unicode] then
>will I be able to view the stuff on all OS'es? irrespective
>of the Fonts? Or must I use TSCII-Avarangal specifically.
>  
>
not more TSCII plz. only UTF-8. All those tamil activities going on 
worldwide (linux/M$ windows) are based on UTF-8.
And all approved keyboards distributed with linux are all UTF based.

>I have used Mandrake-9.1+GNOME to edit in tamil, but it was 
>very simple, on login I had to choose my language, which I had
>pre-installed. But I was ROOT then!!
>  
>
????
Even you can use tamil when you are in english. when ever you use the 
toggle key like this " தமிழ் " irrespective of your language, 
tamil/or 
your native language installed, will appear.

Any doubts?

-pandian
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