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Archive for August, 2006

Enabling support for your Indic language in FC (5 and beyond)

August 31st, 2006

Lots of time I’ve seen & answered this question…

“How do I enable language support for my XXX language”

So let me answer this once more & i’ll point everyone back to this post… lazy me

The word “support” might mean getting fonts for your language, seeing correct rendering for characters of your language, getting to type in your language… etc

So follow these generic steps…

Assumptions - We are setting up Hindi support, we have an internet connection

*1)* Fire up gnome-terminal & execute “su -”
*2)* Perform “yum install scim scim-m17n”
—> Scim is “Smart Common Input Method” and is an input method engine which we’ll use to input language characters.
*3)* Update pango with “yum update pango”
—> Pango needs to be kept updated always as newer versions have a high possibility of more & more bugs being ironed out.
*4)* Install hindi fonts with “yum install fonts-hindi”
—> If you see boxes in the interface when starting gedit as “LANG=hi_IN gedit”, its a sure shot sign that you are missing fonts for your language (hi_IN in our case). Fedora uses Lohit font family.
*5)* Now install m17n support for HIndi with “yum install m17n-db-hindi”
—> This is the package for keyboard layouts.

Now,
*1)* Run gedit, right click in the editor area, go to “Input Methods” submenu, select “SCIM”
*2)* Hit [ctrl]+[space] to activate scim. Select Hindi (inscript) from the scim toolbar & start typing Hindi text.
*3)* To stop & switch back to English mode, hit [ctrl]+[space] again.

If on right clicking in gedit, there’s no submenu as “Input Methods”, try running

gconftool-2 --type bool --set '/desktop/gnome/interface/show_input_method_menu' true

from the terminal.

How to tackle problems you might face…
*A)* Rendering issues
—> Log onto Fedora Bugzilla & file a bug. The more bugs you file, the better support will be for your language.

*B)* You cannot find your language’s fonts in Lohit project
—> Google for your fonts, put them in /usr/share/fonts & run “fc-cache”. Otherwise, Fedora bugzilla is always there.

*C)* Inputting problems
—> Check if the keyboard layout for your language is correct. All m17n layouts are stored in /usr/share/m17n/ as .mim files. You can ping me or file a bug in Fedora bugzilla if you need any help regarding this.

*D)* All others…
—> Join fedora-i18n discussion list & let the concerned ones know that you have found a bug or are facing a problem. You’ll be amazed at how readily you’ll get help
—> You can also log onto #fedora-i18n channel on irc.freenode.net IRC server for instant help.

Good luck

*Comments/suggestions welcome :)*

Posted in Fedora Core, Fedora-i18n | Comments (6)

A few lines more…

August 31st, 2006

शहर छोड़ा, दोस्तों को छोड़ा…
घर वालों को भी छोड़ा…

चिंता ना करो, जल्द ही वापस आयेॆंगे हम…
ज़िंदगी के सभी सपने सहेज लैट आयेॆंगे हम…

गुरुजी ने जो दिखलाया रस्ता…
पाप के रस्तों को हमने छोड़ा…

महावीर ना बन सको हम…
महावीर के तो बन जायेॆंगे हम…

जल्द ही लैट आयेॆंगे हम…
जल्द ही लैट आयेॆंगे हम

Leaving Delhi always has some magical effect on me & I tend to write somethig or other! Though there seems to be no relation between most of the sets… but hey, I aint a poet

This is my second creation & i’m kinda looking forward to it

Posted in A strong urge to blog..., My last night in Delhi-05Feb06 | Comments (8)

I Love You… Python!

August 10th, 2006

Today, I was working on bug 200230 - [locale-def] Locale Definition is not in desired pattern for some Locales

Some indic locales had incorrect spellings & some others had incorrect rendering.

Though rendering issues were out of scope of this bug, correcting the spellings was my task… I started with pa_IN locale & we found that It had Saturday spelt incorrectly. To reach this conclusion, we had to use raw unicode IME to see what "“ stood for… typing using raw unicode IME is… ouch! cumbersome! & the worst part… converting back the correct representation “ਸ਼ਨਿੱਚਰਵਾਰ” to unicode… aahhh!!!! another super dumb job!

So I thought, lets add some spirit to this work… & voila! Python was to rescue!
>>> a=”ਸ਼ਨਿੱਚਰਵਾਰ”
>>> a.decode(”utf-8″)
u’\u0a36\u0a28\u0a3f\u0a71\u0a1a\u0a30\u0a35\u0a3e\u0a30′

In seconds, unicode points for “ਸ਼ਨਿੱਚਰਵਾਰ” were up for grabs!

But wait… changing that big unicode string to a format which was understood by the locale was another issue… & then Tagoh-san came to my help…
He suggested me the hints… & I never looked back!

Finally, after correcting a miniscule error in or_IN locale, I went on to ml_IN, which seemingly had large spelling mistakes.

& then, I wrote this script which takes in the language representation & the unicode point list present in locale definition & checks for spelling errors… suggesting the correct ones on the way.

I’m seriously falling for Python! Jeez!

Though the script can be improved greatly to pick up things directly from the locale file & even write it back… but hey… this was supposed to be a quick hack! & I was supposed to be spending only that much time on this script… as I would have done to manually generate the unicode points!

Posted in Fedora Core, Fedora-i18n | Comments (9)

The fairer sex!

August 9th, 2006

Tonight, I was standing in a queue, waiting for my turn to buy 2 tickets for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift… & a middle aged lady came from behind (& out of her turn) & handed the boy behind the counter, two - hundred rupee notes!

I was like… excuse me…! This is supposed to be a queue & you wait for your turn, rather than barging ahead… I wanted to stop the lady and explain her that everyone here is following rules & she aint no special! She was so dumb & so … uff!

But I did nothing like that, I was not like her! But thsi cant continue for long… “they” need to understand that when they want to be considered equal, they should not act like this! I could have stopped her right there & we would have surely quarelled… but for what? A position in the queue… Tickets were not going to get all sold out within that one switch in the position, nor she would have lost the middle part of the rows…???

Sometimes, the fairer sex just cant act fair enough! …& probably the next time, I wont be that patient & certainly not _that_ forgiving!

…since i’ve mentioned the bad part of __them__, I must also chip in that not everyone is alike… When people act nicely, they get all the respect.

BTW… the movie was awesome, with all the drifts you can ever imagine. If you’ve ever played “Underground NFS2″ & have participated in Drifts, you know where to head this sunday… this movie ~~rocks!~~ Drifts!

Oops, its 11:33pm & i better be going, or we might have to cough up the return fare!

Posted in A strong urge to blog... | Comments (20)