Tamil Unicode Font and Ubuntu Installation at ELCOT

[Shrinivasan T]

Friends.

After finishing yesterdays meet, me(Shrini) and buvan went to ELCOT Office.

Interesting matters held there.

Buvan installed Ubuntu in Mr.UmaSankar's Laptop.
Before, it had Redhat and XP. He had some documents at Redhat.
So, While buvan asked him to remove XP, He accepted with no thinking.

He installed it nicely.

Meanwhile, I went to make tamil unicode typing at Openoffice.

It is simple in Opensuse KDE.
In persenal settings->Region&accebility->Keyboard Layout
It is there to add tamil unicode.

Then put the ~ key to switch the layout.
Thats it. Well done, I hoped.

But there is some real problem in unicode tamil keyboard layout.
It is not purely 100% Remington Typewriter layout.
Sakthi has unicode layout in his site.
I phoned him and gave the people there.

They found some problem in this layout.
As they have 10+ experience in Remington layout,
They feel very tough to adapt this unicode layout.

And the font "Lohit tamil" give some space problems.
It adds ore extra spaces while typing. So alignment is tough.

The requirement is
1. A tamil unicode keyboard layout 100% compitable with remington layout.
2. It should not gice any extra spaces.

Any one has taml typing experience in linux?
How do u solve this?
please mail me,list or hi ur experiences.

Then, He showed the conference hall for GLV. It is nice.

Buvan installed Ubuntu. He likes its automounting options.
It played his DVD movie automatically.
It asked to open the folder when he inserted his thumb drive.

At last, he made his drive to drop me at villivakkam, my place, with some staff.

Thus, He is more interested in FOSS.
With his efforts, Tamilnadu may become FOSS Station.

Thank you all.

dear,
T.Shrinivasan.

[Shakthi Kannan]

Hi,

Post by Shrinivasan T
So, While buvan asked him to remove XP, He accepted
with no thinking.

:)

Post by Shrinivasan T
Sakthi has unicode layout in his site.
I phoned him and gave the people there.

Loading Image...

Post by Shrinivasan T
They found some problem in this layout.
As they have 10+ experience in Remington layout,
They feel very tough to adapt this unicode layout.

I found a screenshot of Remington layout from Google:
Loading Image...

Looks totally different to unicode-style.

Post by Shrinivasan T
And the font "Lohit tamil" give some space problems.
It adds ore extra spaces while typing. So alignment
is tough.

Which editor did you use? Did you try
Abiword/Openoffice/GEdit?

Post by Shrinivasan T
The requirement is
1. A tamil unicode keyboard layout 100% compitable
with remington layout.

We need to remap the keys and there are some
tutorials/HOWTOs on how we can do this:

http://docs.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/06/03/1558258&tid=26

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Intkeyb.html

I am no expert in Indic computing, but, the gurus
should be able to solve this easily.

http://indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?KeyboardLayoutSwitching

I think you should contact the Indic computing folks
and thamizha group (Mugunth and co).

Regards,

SK

--
Shakthi Kannan
http://www.shakthimaan.com

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[Shrinivasan T]

Hi sakthi.

Post by Shakthi Kannan
http://www.supersoftweb.com/images/T_kbd_r.gif

Ya. this keyboard is entirely different.
But this is not the normal typewriter layout.
They need normal layout.

Post by Shakthi Kannan
Which editor did you use? Did you try
Abiword/Openoffice/GEdit?

I used Open office writer, as this is the default offcie tool to be.

Post by Shakthi Kannan
http://docs.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/06/03/1558258&tid=26
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Intkeyb.html
http://indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?KeyboardLayoutSwitching

And the links are nice.
Let me try out with this.

But, I hope the tamil gurus can do it easily.

So, we can write a script to remap the keys
and give the script to them. It would be more user freindly.

Gurus! please Help.

dear,
T.Shrinivasan.

[Shakthi Kannan]

Hi,

Post by Shrinivasan T
Ya. this keyboard is entirely different.
But this is not the normal typewriter layout.
They need normal layout.

Sorry, what do you mean by normal layout?

Post by Shrinivasan T
I used Open office writer, as this is the default
offcie tool to be.

Ok. I usually use GEdit and spacing is fine. Probably
for the specific font one needs to adjust spacing in
OpenOffice?

Post by Shrinivasan T
So, we can write a script to remap the keys

Check /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/in that has the key to
character mapping for Indian languages.

We need to add another entry say:

partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "tam_REM" {
...

Contact e-mail addresses of all the keyboard layout
authors is available in the code.

I have no idea what each hexadecimal value represents.
Applications -> Accessories -> Character Map gives
only unicode values for Tamil.

Regards,

SK

--
Shakthi Kannan
http://www.shakthimaan.com

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[Muguntharaj Subramanian]

Post by Shrinivasan T
Hi sakthi.

Post by Shakthi Kannan
http://www.supersoftweb.com/images/T_kbd_r.gif

Ya. this keyboard is entirely different.
But this is not the normal typewriter layout.
They need normal layout.

Hi All,
Sorry for not able to follow this thread quickly.

Regarding remington keyboard, I am not aware of it.
If Shrinivasan or someone who has gone to ELCOT can get the exact layout we
can hack tamil-gtk2im and creat a remington keyboard out of it.

Regards,
Mugunth

[Kenneth Gonsalves]

Post by Muguntharaj Subramanian
Regarding remington keyboard, I am not aware of it.
If Shrinivasan or someone who has gone to ELCOT can get the exact layout we
can hack tamil-gtk2im and creat a remington keyboard out of it.

http://www.tamilnation.org/digital/tamilnet99/
tamilnet99report.htm#Typewriter%20Keyboard

[Shrinivasan T]

Friends.

In the following file, we can see all the tamil layout options.
/etc/X11/xkb/symbols/tml

so we need to create on e section as

default partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "TYPEWRITER" {

http://www.tamilnation.org/digital/tamilnet99/tamilnet99report.htm#Typewriter%20Keyboard

I hope tamil gurus can do this easily.

I also tried to edit the file.
But dont know how to get those hexa decimal values for key strokes.

so please create such a section in that file.

or any other ways are there?

Thank you,
T.Shrinivasan.

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Post by Shrinivasan T
Buvan installed Ubuntu in Mr.UmaSankar's Laptop.
Before, it had Redhat and XP. He had some documents at Redhat.
So, While buvan asked him to remove XP, He accepted with no thinking.

you could just have replaced the old redhat with ubuntu - especially if
his stuff was in a /home partition rather than all in a single / :)

[Bhuvaneswaran]

Post by Suresh Ramasubramanian
you could just have replaced the old redhat with ubuntu - especially if
his stuff was in a /home partition rather than all in a single / :)

Yeah, but he wanted to retain his redhat partition, as he had his data
in this partition and delete the windows partition.

[Bhuvaneswaran]

Post by Shrinivasan T
Buvan installed Ubuntu. He likes its automounting options.
It played his DVD movie automatically.
It asked to open the folder when he inserted his thumb drive.

With regard to Ubuntu installation, everything went smooth (including
network, audio, video, mouse, etc) except wireless. I've installed and
configured wpa_supplicant software. When i run wireless, i'm able to
ping their wireless gateway IP, but i'm unable to ping the wireless
nameserver. FWIW, they use static IP address for the laptop. I'm
unsure what kind of settings i must verify to fix it.

I may go there sometime next week to complete it.

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Is the nameserver the wifi server supplies actually usable - that is if
you open a terminal and do something like "nslookup www.google.com" are
you able to do that

suresh

Post by Bhuvaneswaran
With regard to Ubuntu installation, everything went smooth (including
network, audio, video, mouse, etc) except wireless. I've installed and
configured wpa_supplicant software. When i run wireless, i'm able to
ping their wireless gateway IP, but i'm unable to ping the wireless
nameserver. FWIW, they use static IP address for the laptop. I'm
unsure what kind of settings i must verify to fix it.
I may go there sometime next week to complete it.

[Bhuvaneswaran]

Post by Suresh Ramasubramanian
Is the nameserver the wifi server supplies actually usable - that is if
you open a terminal and do something like "nslookup www.google.com" are
you able to do that

The admin says that it works fine, but how do we confirm this ?
Mr.Umashankar has another laptop in which the wireless works well
(unfortunately, he didnt have it with him that day, but confirmed to
get it next week). So, i guess we can check the settings in that and
replicate. Anyhow, yesterday, i didnt try "nslookup www.google.com",
but i'll do that.