Swathantra Malayalam Computing

 Setting up Malayalam Fonts and Keyboard for GNU/Linux (RedHat 9) 

There are  two font subsystems in X  windows, The 15 years  old core X font subsystem/xfs and the new fontconfig subsystem. 
xfs renders fonts in non  anti-aliased fashion, where  as fontconfig renders  fonts with antialiasing.  Over the time fontconfig 
is expected to replace xfs. At present appplications using the Qt 3 or GTK 2 (which includes GNOME and KDE) uses the fontconfig; 
most of the other apps uses xfs.


Note: OpenOffice uses it's own  font rendering technology and there is some difference in  Mozilla also.As we are not  sure which
application is using  which font sub  system, it may  be better to add  fonts into both subsystem.


To get a list of all installed fonts

$ xlsfonts

First of all you need Malayalam fonts.


You may download the fonts from SMC project website    http://savannah.nongnu.org/files/?group=smc or  
from http://www.keralaindustry.org/malayalam  website. Download comes as a gzipped tar ball, so unzip and untar. 

 $ tar -zxvf free-mal-fonts.tar.gz


where  'free-mal-fonts.tar.gz' is the  downloaded malayalam  font file name


Create  a  directory  and  move  all  font  files  to  that  directory (/usr/share/fonts/malayalam ). Change to the new directory

 $ cd  /usr/share/fonts/malayalam/

To add fonts into xfs

create index of scalable font files for X

 $ mkfontscale

this  command  should  create  new  file  in  that  directory,  namely 'fonts.scale' and the contents may look something similar as 
follows


AkrutiMal2Bold.ttf -misc-AkrutiMal2-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

AkrutiMal2Normal.ttf -misc-AkrutiMal2-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

mal1-b.ttf -misc-AkrutiMal1-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

mal1-n.ttf -misc-AkrutiMal1-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

mal2-b.ttf -misc-AkrutiMal2-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

mal2-n.ttf -misc-AkrutiMal2-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

malayalam.ttf -misc-malayalam-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

MalOtf.ttf -misc-MalOtf-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

nonstd-ml-01.ttf -misc-Tulasi-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

nonstd-ml-02.ttf -misc-Thoolika-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

nonstd-ml-03.ttf -misc-Matweb-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

nonstd-ml-04.ttf -misc-Manorama-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

nonstd-ml-05.ttf -misc-ML TTKarthika-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

nonstd-ml-06.ttf -misc-Shree Mal 0502-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1


use mkfontdir  to create an index of X font files in a directory


Because scalable  font files do not  usually include the  X font name, the file "fonts.scale"  can be used to name the  scalable fonts 
in the directory.   The  fonts  listed  in  it are  copied  to  fonts.dir  by mkfontdir.  "fonts.scale" has the same format as the "fonts.dir" file.

$ mkfontdir

Add the new directory to xfs  path

$ chkfontpath --add /usr/share/fonts/malayalam

update the new font information

$ ttmkfdir -d /usr/share/fonts/malayalam -o /usr/share/fonts/malayalam/fonts.scale

Reload the xfs font server as follows

$ service xfs reload

To add fonts into fontconfig is very easy. use the following command.

$ fc-cache /usr/share/fonts/malayalam

To configure fonts only for your id,  create a directory namely  ~/.fonts/

$ fc-cache ~/.fonts/

Or you may use Nautilus to do this

$ nautilus

then in the address bar enter fonts:/// then drag and drop required fonts


Setting up fonts  for applications based on GTK+1.2,  this part may be required create/modify .gtkrc.mine file in your home 
directory as follows.

style "user-font" {

font-set ="-misc-MalOtf-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1"
}

widget_class "*" style "user-font"

I  am not sure  what exactly  the use  of this,  if someone  knows the details, please update


Setting up Malayalam keyboard in KDE


Open  KDE  control  center  form   start  up  menu,  go  to  regional&accessibilty select  keyboard then select malayalam from 
the list, do NOT  remove english.   Save settings.  After saving  the  settings you should see  a small icon  in regith side  of the 
taskbar near  to your clock,   click   that   icon,   it   ll  toggle   your   keyboard   to english/malayalam.


All  right,  your  Malayalam  keyboard   is  ready  to  use,  open  an application,  say 'konsole'  KDE terminal  application or  gedit 
start typing, you should be able to  type Malayalam or English based on your keyboard settings. If you want  to input malayalam 
chars in openOffice, then  select fonts  like Malayalam or  MalOtf (only these  two fonts works for me) and start typing. ' ?????' .

Here is the Malayalam Keyboard Guide ( മലയാളം  കീേബാ൪ഡ്  സഹായി )

Need to write about different ways to setup keyboard in GNOME, etc,etc. Will update sooner

xset - user preference utility for X

To restore the default font path:

         fp default

To have the server reread font databases:

         fp rehash

To remove elements from font path:

        -fp path[,path...]  fp- path[,path...]

To prepend or append elements to font path:

        +fp path[,path...]  fp+ path[,path...]