Hi Shakthi, On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 13:00 +0530, Shakthi Kannan wrote: > Greetings! > > I have installed Ubuntu Dapper Beta on my T41 and running Gnome. > Installation was smooth. Treat me as a "new be" here. > > I am currently testing tamil support in this distro with gnome. I have > installed ttf-indic-fonts, scim, gnome-language-ta et. al. My > inferences/doubts: > > 1. Able to use tamil keyboard input (UTF-8) with Gedit, Gaim, Abiword, > Vim and Mozilla Firefox.
Good. > 2. Have setup CAPS lock key to switch between US and tamil unicode. Ok. I do not know about SCIM, this looks like a good key combination for the switching. > 3. In gnome-termial, when doing a cat on a tamil file, the "dots" for > letters are printed separately, and certain double-characters are > interchanged: > > http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/tamil/terminal.jpg ... (I) Check out the bug reports at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/ for "gnome-terminal". If it is not listed already, please make a bug report attaching the screenshot. When searching in Bugzilla, use Classification Desktop and Product "gnome-terminal" or "vte" (the library in gnome-terminal). Also, if you search on Google for "gnome-terminal indic", you may find existing discussions. Get in contact with the Tamil GNOME team for the background on this, http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/teams.html > 4. Gnome tamil interface is also good. I still need clarification on > couple of things: > > Gaim, Firefox and Gedit automatically do the translation as per our > written tamil when I enter into US language (from gdm) and switch to > tamil unicode keyboard typing: > > http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/tamil/text-editor.jpg ... (II) > > On the other hand, if I login into gdm with Tamil language gnome > interface, the above automatic translation does not happen. I get the > "o" and "oo" as unicode formats, as also seen from: > > http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/tamil/terminal.jpg > > Why is this so? I am not quite sure I understand this issue. If writing support is not consistent, this is an Ubuntu configuration issue. See launchpad.net, search for existing bug reports or file a new one. > I'd like to use tamil gnome interface and also be able to get the > written tamil form for "o" and "oo" appended to the characters. How > can this be fixed? Rendering should work ok. If not, it's an issue of what default font Ubuntu uses for Tamil. Use Accessories/Character Map, find Tamil group and right-click on letters. This will show which font is used for Tamil. If FreeSans/FreeMono is used, then there are issues with it and you need to fix with Ubuntu (or "fontconfig" at FreeDesktop). > 5. Not all gnome menus have been translated to tamil. Whom should I > contact for this? http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/teams.html Help out Jayaradha for this. > 6. I am interested in a typing tutor for Tamil. I have looked at > Klavaro, and it uses UTF-8. But, again with UTF-8, the text displayed > is very different from our written tamil (I). Is there any way we can > write a gnome application for touch typing for Tamil with the actual > written form as seen in (II)? There is one way that Tamil should be written, and that's the correct way. :) Most probably it's a font issue that should be resolved. The GNOME application for Tamil touch typing should be no different from one of another language. > 7. What is the format in which a language dictionary should be > written, so that it can be imported from other necessary gnome > applications? That should be "aspell". Google this. Please check the Thamizha group at http://thamizha.com/ as they work on Tamil in FLOSS. It's good to work on these issues with the community. > 8. Is there a letter pronounciation gnome package for teaching > letters/pronounciation of words of a language that I am not aware of? I am not sure. You can look at www.gnomefiles.org, or google for "gnome pronounciation" (or similar), or check freshmeat.net and sourceforge.net. Cheers, Simos > Appreciate any feedback. > > Apologize for any incorrect terminology used as I am very new to this. > > Thanking you, > > SK > > -- > Shakthi Kannan > http://www.shakthimaan.com > _______________________________________________ > gnome-i18n mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n > _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
