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How to teach your
friendly penguin to speak in Malayalam ?
There is an old
saying, "When in Rome, live like a Roman". If we apply that theory to
GNU/Linux in Kerala, it follows that GNU/Linux should have Malayalam
capabilities to mingle as a Malayalee while in Kerala.
So how do we do that
?
First of all, we need
to let the Penguin know that he is in Kerala and the language is
Malayalam. That means we need to set the following values;
LANGUAGE=ml_IN.UTF-8, LANG=ml_IN.UTF-8 and LC_ALL=ml_IN.UTF-8. Then set
the Malayalam keyboard, so that we can key in Malayalam characters. Note:'ml' stands for
Malayalam, 'IN' stands for India. Next we have to
install a Malayalam font (UTF-8) and add it to font cache and xfs. Then
copy localized .mo files and .desktop files files into appropriate
directories. Logout and log back in you should see a happy Penguin that
talks 'koncham koncham' Malayalam. Provided that all other necessary
components are in place, we are done.
Hmmm... that was a little more complicated than you would have liked.
Well, at SMC we are here make things simpler.
SMC has created an
installation shell script that will take care of all these details for
you. All you need to do is go to SMC home page and download the
appropriate file
from the download section, and follow the steps
outlined below. We do assume a basic proficiency with the GNU/Linux
operating system.
Download the following file to a well known directory (for example
/tmp):
smc-mgl.0.0.2.tar.gz
From this point onwards you should have admin rights on your
machine.
You must login as root; it is not sufficient to su/sudo after logging
in as a different user (this will be fixed in the next release). Here
are the exact steps that you have to take after you login as root:
$ cd /tmp
(or
wherever you downloaded the smc-mgl.0.0.2.tar.gz file to)
$ tar -xvzf
smc-mgl.0.0.2.tar.gz
$ cd smc-mgl
$ ./ml_gnome_setup
If you are a Redhat 9 user, run the following script:
$ ./rh9_setup
The ml_gnome_setup
script creates a new user account (mgl)
on your machine; by default there is no password. Feel free to change
the password to whatever you like, or if you leave it alone if that is
your preference. Logout of root, and log back in as user mgl. We use this new user account to
contain any possible issues that may arise from the installation of our
applications. To toggle the
keyboard between English and Malayalam press both 'Shift' keys together
(you should see one LED on your keyboard is lit up when the keyboard is
in Malayalam mode).
For all this things
to work properly you need a couple of software components installed on
your machine. If you are using
RedHat version 9 distribution (RH9) with GNOME, you don't have to worry
about anything.
If not, make sure
that you are using GNOME as your desktop, along with the following
packages:
- GTK+ version 2.0 or
higher.
- Pango version 1.2-1.3
or higher
If anyone has tried
installing Malayalam GNOME on any other distributions, please add the
details here.
(C)
Swathantra Malayalam Computing
Trademarks
are owned by their owners.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute
and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License,
Version 1.2 or any later version published
by the Free Software Foundation;
A copy of the license is located at
www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html, in the section entitled "GNU Free
Documentation License".
The information given in this document is
believed to be correct, the author will accept no liability for the
content of this document.
Use this document at your own risk.
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