ସହଯୋଗ:Multilingual support (Indic)

ଇଂରାଜୀ ଲିଙ୍କ

https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:INDIC

Several pages on Wikipedia use Indic scripts to illustrate the native representation of names, places, quotes and literature. Unicode is the encoding used on Wikipedia and it contains support for a number of Indic scripts. However, before Indic scripts can be viewed or edited, support for complex text layout must be enabled on your operating system. Some older operating systems do not support complex text rendering and you should not use such systems to edit Indic scripts.

This page lists the methods for enabling complex text rendering based on the operating environment or browser you are using. Many of the methods highlighted can also be used for non-Indic complex scripts such as Arabic.

Check for existing support

The following table compares how a correctly enabled computer would render the following scripts with how your computer renders them:

Script	Example of rendering		Mac OS X inbuilt support				Linux or BSD inbuilt support		Windows inbuilt support
	Correct rendering	Your computer	OS 10.3	OS 10.4	OS 10.5/6	OS 10.7	KDE with Qt	GNOME with Pango	9x/ME or NT	2000	XP or 2003	XP SP2	Vista/7
Devanagari		क + ि → कि	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tamil		க + ே → கே	needs font	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gujarati		ક + િ → કિ	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	no	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gurmukhi		ਕ + ਿ → ਕਿ	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	no	Yes	Yes	Yes
Kannada		ಕ + ಿ → ಕಿ	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Telugu		య + ీ → యీ	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	no	Yes	Yes	Yes
Bengali, Assamese		ক + ি → কি	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	no	no	Yes	Yes
Malayalam		ക + െ → കെ	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	no	no	Yes	Yes
Tibetan		ར + ྐ + ྱ → རྐྱ	needs font	needs font	Yes	Yes	no	needs font	no	no	no	needs patch	Yes
Sinhala		ඵ + ේ → ඵේ	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	no	Yes	no	no	no	needs font	Yes
Oriya		କ + େ → କେ	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	no	no	needs font	Yes
Thai		ฐ + ู → ฐู	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Lao		ລ + າ + ວ → ລາວ	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	no	Yes	no	no	no	needs font	Yes
Khmer		ម + ្ + ស + ៅ → ម្សៅ	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	Yes	Yes	no	no	no	needs font	Yes
Burmese		ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Lang-my-Mymr + ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Lang-my-Mymr → ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Lang-my-Mymr	needs font	needs font	needs font	Yes	no	needs font	no	no	no	needs font	needs font

If the rendering on your computer matches the rendering in the images for the scripts, then you have already enabled complex text support. You should be able to view text correctly in that script. However, this does not mean you will be able to edit text in that script. To edit such text you need to have the appropriate text entry software on your operating system.

Devanagari bilingual Keyboard INSCRIPT layout

To type in Devenagari script, use of INSCRIPT इंस्क्रिप्ट keyboard is a permanent and easy solution. Inscript is standard developed by CDAC and approved by Government of India.

टीवीएस कंपनी के इंस्क्रिप्ट द्विभाषीय कीबोर्ड

Devanagari Bilingual keyboard INSCRIPT. This keyboard can be configured to work with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux and fedora Linux etc. See below sections for detailed instructions.

Windows 95/98/ME and NT

These operating systems contain no inbuilt support for Indic scripts. Indic Scripts can only be seen properly in Internet Explorer. You also need to have an appropriate Unicode font installed in your system for that script. It is suggested to install Internet Explorer 6.0 because it has better support for Indic scripts.

Mozilla Firefox did not support Indic scripts properly on these operating systems unless a modified version of the program is used, such as the one found here. This is due to bugs in Firefox [୧], [୨]. This bug was fixed in Firefox 3, but Firefox 3 does not support Windows 98/ME.

No Unicode Keyboard Driver Engines (like Indic IME, BarahaIME etc) are available for these older systems. One can either use online typing tools or offline text editors specially made for this purpose. A list of such tools is given here.

User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

Windows 2000

Supports: Devanagari, Kannada, Tamil

Complex text support needs to be manually enabled.

Viewing Indic text

• Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Regional Options > General [Tab].
• In the "Language settings for this system" frame, check the box next to "Indic".
• Copy the appropriate files from the Windows 2000 CD when prompted.
• If prompted, reboot your computer once the files have been installed.

If you don't have the Windows CD or don't want to juggle with CD right now, you can simply download this zip file and extract its contents to a folder. When prompted for Windows CD, simply point to this folder using 'Browse' option of the prompt window.

Inputting Indic text

You must follow the steps above before you perform the remaining steps.

• Select "Input Locale" [Tab].
• Click the "Add" button in the "Installed input locales" frame.
• Select the desired language in the "Input Locale" drop-down box on the "Add Input Locale" dialogue box.
• Now select the appropriate keyboard you wish to use.
• If you select Inscript Keyboard here, you can use Devenagari bilingual keyboard available in market. See above.
• For the people who are not able to use the above InScript Keyboard, can use the Phonetic keyboards from Baraha. Baraha Direct included in Baraha Package supports both ANSI & Unicode while BarahaIME supports only Unicode.
• For people who cannot download the above software, or for people on the move, dboard is an Indian language sandbox which provides an online virtual (visual) keyboard, you can use the following application, copy the text on the clipboard and then copy it back to the Wikipedia editing box.
• Another alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

Windows XP and Server 2003

Supports: Bengali (XP SP2), Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam (XP SP2), Tamil, Telugu. The default Bengali font, Vrinda, appears too small, so it might be desirable to install another font. Oriya works with SP2 and later if you install unicode fonts.

Complex text support needs to be manually enabled.

Viewing Indic text

1. Install at least one Unicode font in your system, associated with the language that you want to view correctly, or install a Unicode font which contains large character set for many different languages.
2. Go to Start > Control Panel.
3. If you are in "Category View" select the icon that says "Date, Time, Language and Regional Options" and then select "Regional and Language Options".
4. If you are in Classic View select the icon that says "Regional and Language Options".
5. Select the "Languages" tab and make sure you select the option saying "Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages (including Thai)". A confirmation message should now appear - press "OK" on this confirmation message.
6. Allow the OS to install necessary files from the Windows XP CD and then reboot if prompted.
7. Install or Enable your Language(Script) support on your web-browser software:
   • On Internet Explorer 6: Go to Tools → Internet Options → General → Languages, and add your particular language(s) that you want to view correctly.
   • On Firefox 1.5: Go to Tools → Options → Advanced → General → Edit Languages..., and add your particular languages(s) that you want to view correctly.
   • On Firefox 3.0: Go to Tools → Options → Content → Languages → Choose..., and add your particular languages(s) that you want to view correctly. Doesn't work for Firefox 3.6.13 though!
8. Go to your web-browser's "view" menu and set the "character encoding" or "encoding" feature to: Unicode (UTF-8).

In Firefox, if Indic Scripts are still appearing incorrectly, you may then use the latest version of usp10.dll on your system and it may also be necessary to install a Unicode OpenType font.

This is an optional step, only when you want to use a specific Unicode font for your chosen particular language(s) for viewing webpages.

1. To use a specific font for webpages:
   • For Internet Explorer 6: Go to Tools → Internet options → Fonts, choose your particular language from the Language Script pulldown menu and select a font from one of the available fonts for that particular language in your system.
   • For Firefox 1.5: Go to Tools → Options → Content tab → Advanced… in the Fonts and colors section. In the pop up window titled "Fonts", select your particular language from the "Fonts for:" pulldown Menu and set a font that is associated with your particular language of your choice, for various kinds of fields like Serif, Sans Serif, Monospace, etc. to be used for showing webpages.
   • For Opera 9: Go to Tools → Preferences → Advanced tab → Fonts → International fonts → choose your particular language from the drop down list. Select a font for your language of your choice. In most of the cases, Opera automatically detects if you have enabled Unicode support and installed fonts, so you may not require this step.

Tibetan is properly supported since Firefox 4.

Inputting Indic text

Windows XP has inbuilt InScript Keyboards for nearly all Indian languages. You can add them via Control Panel. You must follow the steps above before you perform the remaining steps.

• In the "Regional and Language Options", click the "Languages" tab.
• Click on the "Details" button.
• Click the "Add" button to add a keyboard for your particular language.
• In the drop-down box, select your required Indian language.
• Make sure the check box labelled "Keyboard layout/IME" is selected and ensure you select an appropriate keyboard.
• Now select "OK" to save changes.

You can use the combination Alt+⇧ Shift to switch between different keyboard layouts (e.g. from a UK Keyboard to Gurmukhi and vice-versa). If you want a language bar, you can select it by pressing the "Language Bar…" button on the "Text Services and Input Languages" dialog and then selecting "Show the language bar on my desktop". The language bar enables you to visually select the keyboard layout you are using.

• For the people who are not able to use the above InScript Keyboard, there are some other Keyboard Drivers available. For Phonetic typing BarahaIME or PramukhIME is suggested and for Remington typing IndicIME is suggested.

Baraha and PramukhIME are Phonetic based software and includes nearly all of Indic languages. Baraha Direct included in Baraha Package supports both ANSI & Unicode while BarahaIME supports only Unicode.

• Indic IME 1 (v5.0) is available from Microsoft Bhasha India. This supports Hindi Scripts, Gujarati, Kannada and Tamil. Indic IME 1 gives the user a choice between a number of keyboards including Phonetic, InScript and Remington.

If you do not have Windows CD, there is a modified version of the installer for Hindi named Hindi Toolkit which automatically installs Indic Support as well as Hindi Indic IME.

• For people who cannot download the above software, or for people on the move, dboard is an Indian language sandbox which provides an online virtual (visual) keyboard, you can use the following application, copy the text on the clipboard and then copy it back to the Wikipedia editing box.
• MyMyanmar Projects provide MyMyanmar Unicode System to input Myanmar(Burmese) text.
• Another alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Supports: Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan. The default Bengali font, Vrinda, appears too small, so it might be desirable to install another font.

Complex text support is automatically enabled.

Viewing Indic text

ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Burmese characters You do not need to do anything to enable viewing of Indic text, except Burmese script (examples: ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Lang-my-Mymr + ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Lang-my-Mymr → ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Lang-my-Mymr and ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Lang-my-Mymr) which needs a font not pre-installed on Vista. Follow the help provided in Template:Burmese characters at the right.

The pre-installed Khmer fonts in Windows Vista and Windows 7 are generally considered illegible due to their tiny default point. If desire, these fonts may be replaced with other Khmer Unicode fonts available online. See http://www.selapa.net/khmerfonts/ for a list of Khmer Unicode fonts.

Inputting Indic text

Windows Vista, like Windows XP, has inbuilt InScript keyboards for nearly all Indian languages. You can add them via the Control Panel.

1. Go to Start → Control Panel
2. If you are in normal view, select Change keyboards or other input methods from under Clock, Language and Region.
3. If you are in Classic view, select Regional and Language Options.
4. Select the Keyboards and Languages tab if it is not already selected.
5. Select the Change keyboards... button.
6. Choose you desired language(s) from the list and expand them using the '+' sign. Then, expand the item which says Keyboard and tick your preferred keyboard layout(s).
7. Select OK, and OK again to save the changes.

The hot key combination for switching between languages is Alt+⇧ Shift.

For Phonetic typing BarahaIME and PramukhIME or the ISIS keyboards by Prof Gautam Sengupta are suggested and for Remington typing IndicIME is suggested.

• Another alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page. The ISIS keyboards are available through Keymanweb

Mac OS 9 and earlier

The Indian Language Kit, available from Apple at additional cost,^[୩] provides support for Devanagari, Gujarati and Gurmukhi. No third-party Unicode solutions are known, though numerous custom-encoded fonts exist.

Mac OS X

Inbuilt support:

• Mac OS 10.3 and earlier support Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi
• Mac OS 10.4 adds support for Tamil
• Mac OS 10.5 adds support for Tibetan
• Mac OS 10.7 adds support for Kannada, Telugu, Bengali/Assamese, Malayalam, Sinhala, Oriya, Lao, Khmer and Burmese.

Additional fonts:

• Free fonts for nearly all Indic scripts available from nickshanks.com
• Free Bangla fonts and keyboard available from ekushey.org
• Free Kannada fonts and keyboard available from nickshanks.com
• Free Telugu font available from nickshanks.com, keyboard from doe.carleton.ca
• Free Malayalam fonts and keyboards available from saikatham.com
• Free Sinhala font available from nickshanks.com
• Free Khmer font available from Nimol's blog or Danh Hong's blog or by downloading any khmer font from Google Web Fonts
• Free Oriya font available via Apple's iOS Simulator. See nickshanks.com for details.
• Free Burmese font: Martin Hosken’s Padauk

Non-free fonts and keyboards for all Indic scripts are available from xenotypetech.com

Note: Additional fonts for these scripts have to be in /Library/Fonts in order for text to be displayed.

Viewing Indic text

You do not need to do anything to enable viewing of Indic text as long as you have installed a suitable font. The Indic text will be displayed by Safari or most other Cocoa applications, which fully support rearrangement and substitution for AAT-based fonts, and it will be displayed by Firefox after 4.0 which fully supports rearrangement and substitution for OpenType-based fonts by using HarfBuzz. Opera also provides some support, although considerable bugs remain as of version 11.01 (though Opera at least renders the glyphs).

Carbon applications such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop do not generally support Indic script.

Inputting Indic text

Specific keyboard layouts can be enabled in System Preferences, in the International pane. Switching among enabled keyboard layouts is done through the input menu in the upper right corner of the screen. The input menu appears as an icon indicating the current input method or keyboard layout — often a flag identified with the country, language, or script. Specific instructions are available from the "Help" menu (search for "Writing text in other languages").

Mac OS 10.4 system software comes with two installable Keyboard input options for Tamil: Murasu Anjal and Tamilnet 99. One needs to do the following steps to activate them:

i) Open "international" located within System Preferences and select "language". Select the "edit list", select "Tamil" from the list of languages shown and click OK.

ii) Select "input menu" to see a list of keyboard options available. Select "Anjal" and "Tamilnet99" keyboards under Murasu Anjal Tamil and Click OK.

iii) Anjal and Tamilnet99 keyboard icons appear immediately in the list of keyboards to select under the country flag in the top menu bar.

An alternative way to activate the keyboard(s) for Devanagari (Hindi etc.):

i) Open "International" located within System Preferences and select the "Input Menu" tab. (ii) Check the option for "Devanagari" and/or "Devanagari - QWERTY". (iii) Check the "Show input menu in menu bar" option at the bottom of the "International" panel. Close the panel, and the new keyboard(s) should be available for selection when you click on the menu bar icon (upper right corner).

SIL distributes a freeware Ukelele that allows anyone to design their own input keyboard for Mac OS X.

• Another alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

Linux

GNOME

Supports: Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan

Viewing Indic text

You do not need to do anything to enable viewing of Indic text in GNOME 2.8 or later. Older versions may have support for some, but not all Indic scripts. Ensure you have appropriate Unicode fonts for each script you wish to view or edit.

Some web browsers may require you to enable Pango rendering to view Indic text properly.

• For Epiphany, Pango rendering can be enabled in GConf. Press Alt+F2 to bring up the Run Application dialog, then enter gconf-editor and click Run. The Configuration Editor window will appear. In the left pane, unfold apps → epiphany and click the web section. In the right pane, check the box next to the enable_pango option, then restart Epiphany.
• Firefox 3 can render Indic text out-of-the-box. When using older versions of Mozilla or Firefox, you can enable Pango rendering by opening xterm and typing MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO=1 mozilla or MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO=1 firefox. After this, all future sessions of Mozilla or Firefox will have Indic language support.
  • This will work only on Firefox compiled with --enable-pango.
  • The easiest way to check whether --enable-pango was used in your copy of Firefox is to type about:buildconfig in the address bar and to look for the string (--enable-pango).
  • For Ubuntu 6.06, this support has been turned off due to speed issues. To enable support, you must type MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0 firefox. Future sessions do not remember this setting, so it must be repeated.
  • For Ubuntu 7.10 and above, this support can be enabled just by installing the relevant language support packs.

For instance, to support Kannada display, the following is sufficient: sudo apt-get install language-pack-kn language-support-kn language-pack-gnome-kn ttf-kannada-fonts similarly, to support Tamizh display, the following is sufficient: sudo apt-get install language-pack-ta language-support-ta language-pack-gnome-ta ttf-tamil-fonts and to support Telugu display, the following is sufficient: sudo apt-get install language-pack-te language-support-te language-pack-gnome-te ttf-telugu-fonts

• • For SUSE 10.1 you have to add the MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO=1 to your .profile to make the effect permanent.
    1. Go to your home directory, then edit the .profile file -it is a hidden file.
    2. Scroll down to the last line of the file and add: export MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO=1
    3. Save the .profile file. Restart for the effect to take place

Inputting Indic text

• Go to System → Preferences → Keyboard.
• Select the "Layouts" tab.
• Press "Add", then select the keyboard for the language or script you wish to use from the "Available Layouts" frame and then press "Add".
• Press "Close" to discard the dialogue box.
• Right click on the main menu on your desktop and select "Add to Panel…".
• Select "Keyboard Indicator" and click "Add".
• Position the keyboard indicator on your menu bar and click it to switch between keyboard layouts.

Using SCIM

Another option is to use SCIM. To enable it,

• Install Hindi font support, groupinstall hindi-support
• Then enable SCIM, using System → Personal → Input Method from the menu, and use Hindi phonetic support.

For more check (on Fedora) http://www.ruturaj.net/fedora-6-hindi-support-scim on Fedora, or (on Debian/Ubuntu) http://dev.sampada.net/Baraha_like_Input_on_Linux

• Another alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

KDE

Supports: Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu.

Viewing Indic text

You do not need to do anything to enable viewing of Indic text. Ensure you have appropriate Unicode fonts for each script you wish to view or edit.

Inputting Indic text

• In the System Settings, go to Input Devices, Keyboard
• In the tab Layout, enable Configure layouts
• Click on Add Layout
• Choose 'India' in Layout and the language you want in Variant
• Click on OK
• Now, you will have an icon for the Keyboard Layout in your system tray, in which you can choose the layout you want

• Another alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

Distribution-specific advice

Debian (and derivatives like Ubuntu)

Supports: Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi (including the variants for Punjabi), Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan.

Viewing Indic text

Enter as root:

apt-get install ttf-indic-fonts

and when the installation is complete restart the X server.

Restarting X Server in Debian

1. Go to a Virtual Terminal, say Ctrl+Alt+F1 (anything from F1 to F6). You will see a console. Login with your user credentials. 2. Then enter the following commands as root or sudo

/etc/init.d/ kdm|gdm3|xdm stop 
/etc/init.d/ kdm|gdm3|xdm restart

The package name for the TrueType font of Thai is ttf-thai-tlwg

For viewing Tibetan script
Enter as root:

apt-get install ttf-tmuni ttf-dzongkha

For Mozilla and Firefox, see the comments above under "gnome". Rendering should work correctly "out of the box" as of Debian-4.0 (etch).

Inputting Indic text

SCIM supports text input in Indic languages including phonetic layout. SCIM should be working by default in recent distributions. More instructions on using and configuring SCIM can be found on help.ubuntu.com [୪]

• Another alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

Fedora

Supports: Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi (including the variants for Punjabi), Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu among others.

Installing Indic fonts

For example, to install Kannada fonts, Simply enter as root on the console and type in the command:

yum install fonts-kannada

This will download the Kannada fonts from the repositories and install it.

Similarly, for Hindi, say, enter as root on the console and type in the command:

yum install fonts-hindi

Keyboard support

Start the Add/Remove software applet. For example in KDE, say, navigate to System and then Add/Remove software. In the applet window, select Languages on the list box to your left hand side. In the right hand side list box, select the Indian languages of interest to you.

For example, to have Kannada key board support, check the box for Kannada Support. Similarly, for Hindi support, say, check the box for Hindi Support.

It has been observed that for Kannada, Fedora not only puts in Kannada keyboard support, but also provides transliteration support and also the keyboard support for KGP (Kannada Ganaka Parishad) keyboards. With this feature, users can directly type in Kannada words in Roman script to be transliterated to Kannada text in the application of your choice. For example into your browser, text editor, document editor, email client etc. Users can also use native Kannada keyboards, KGP based or otherwise to type in Kannada texts directly.

• An alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

Arch Linux

Supports: Bengali (including the variants for Assamese), Gujarati, Gurmukhi (including variants for Punjabi), Devanagari (for Hindi and Sanskrit), Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu.

To install Indic fonts:

pacman -S ttf-indic-otf

To enter Indic text in GNOME/KDE, follow the instructions in the respective sections above.

Gentoo

Supports: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu,

Installing Indic fonts

emerge lohit-fonts

Note: The lohit-fonts package was earlier named media-fonts/fonts-indic.

The mozilla-*-bin products shipped by gentoo are directly taken from mozilla's ftp servers and aren't built with pango support. Unless you notice a problem with this you need to build your own copy with the "moznopango" USE flag disabled: USE="-moznopango" (notice the minus sign, which in this case results in a double negation). Firefox 3 will be shipping with pango enabled by default.

Inputting Indic text

emerge -av scim-tables scim-m17n

Study the USE flags and the LINGUAS flags and set them accordingly depending on your desktop environment and language support needed. The following needs to be set whenever you login (append it to your .xinitrc or .xsession).

export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM    #case matters for this variable!
export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
export QT_IM_MODULE=scim

Mozilla apps and precompiled software such as acroread might not play well with scim (C++). In such cases, make use of scim-bridge (C - avoiding C++ ABI issues) [୫].

emerge scim-bridge

and startup firefox as:

% GTK_IM_MODULE=scim-bridge firefox

You might have to start the scim daemon manually. (Add it your session's startup)

scim -d

SCIM is a unified frontend for currently available input method libraries.

• A simple alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia with support for 300 languages, including most of the complex scripts listed on this page.

FreeBSD

Supports: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu.

Installing Indic fonts

cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/fonts-indic && make install clean

The binary package of firefox (when you do pkg_add -r firefox) might give the same problems as in Gentoo's bin package (needs confirmation)

cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/fonts-te && make install clean

The above port is for Telugu Pothana2000 Fonts.

Inputting Indic text

See Gentoo's section above.

NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD, pkgsrc

Similar to FreeBSD

cd /usr/pkgsrc/fonts/lohit-fonts && make install clean

Unicode OpenType fonts

This section lists OpenType fonts, supported by Microsoft Windows and most Linux distributions. For AAT fonts (required for the Apple Macintosh), see the Mac OS X section above.

If you have followed the instructions for your computer system as mentioned above and you still cannot view Indic text properly, you may need to install a Unicode font:

• Bengali : SolaimanLipi
• Burmese : Padauk 2.6, Myanmar3, Parabaik
• Devanagari : National Institute Of Social Defence
  BBC Hindi
• Gujarati : Padma
• Gurmukhi : AnmolUni, Saab
• Kannada : Mallige, Kedage
• Khmer : KhmerOS
• Lao : Lao Script's free Saysettha OT
• Malayalam : Aruna malayalam
• Oriya : Utkal, Samyak or RaghuOriya
• Sinhala : LKLUG, Malathi, KaputaUnicode, KandyUnicode
• Tamil : Akshar Unicode
• Telugu : Akshar Unicode
• Thai : ???
• Tibetan : Tibetan Machine Uni or Tibetan Machine Uni font (direct download), Jomolhari
• Urdu : Nafees Nastaleeq

The governmental Department of Information Technology (India) has provided Unicode Indic fonts for four of the Indic scripts used in India (several versions for Devanagari, one version for each of Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil).

WAZU JAPAN's Gallery of Unicode Fonts is an excellent resource for all Indic scripts.

External links

Other information

• Indic Script Drupal Module: Indic Script Drupal Module
• Enabling Kannada at the Kannada Wikipedia
• Punjabi Computing Resource Centre - Resources
• Fedora Core 3 release notes, with instructions for enabling Pango rendering in Mozilla.
• Microsoft BhashaIndia Article - How to enable Indic Language Support at OS level?
• Homepage of Indlinux
• Information provided on Marathi Wikipedia about Enabling Devanagari Fonts
• paahijen - Applications in Indian Languages
• Malayalam Computing Portal - Howtos and other information on using malayalam in computers
• Free Online Indic Transliteration in all Indian Languages and to image conversion Bengali - Hindi - Kannada - Malayalam - Oriya - Punjabi - Tamil - Gujarati - Punjabi/Gurumukhi & Telugu

Fonts

• Nombreux liens vers polices de caractères indiens
• Bangla Unicode fonts and typing system project
• Information at THDL about Tibetan Fonts & Unicode
• National Library of Bhutan - Information about Dzongkha Fonts, Unicode & Keyboard

Other input methods

Online transliteration/input

• [୬] Guide to type in Odia (Oriya) language using Microsoft ILIT
• [୭] is good and very easy to use transliteration system to use for writing in Indian language
• Google Indic Transliteration can be used to type in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu etc. It even has scriptlets to make it easy.
• QuillPad, a tool for transliterating into native scripts
• Girgit Online Indic to Indic Transliteration of Webpages Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, English
• Uninagari: Multi-script Indic typewriter
• Online Indic Keyboard Input: Uses indic_web_input package from entrans
• Varamozhi: Standalone editor, online keyboard and IME for Malayalam using Mozhi scheme. Free and copylefted under GPL.
• w3Tamil Web keyboard helps to type Tamil Unicode characters on computers which do not have a keyboard for typing the Tamil alphabet. It based on Tamil99 Keyboard Layout.
• Tamil Typing: Tamil Typing
• Online writing of Devanagari using English keyboard. Website also supports Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati, Oriya, Bengali and Punjabi. See Devanagari transliteration for help as to which letters correspond with which Devanagari characters.
• [୮] Online / offline nepali unicode transliteration tool

Browser plugins

• Ekya: Indic Transliteration Bookmarklets let you type anywhere on the web.
• IndicIME firefox extension Firefox extension to type in Indian Languages on the web.

Software to be installed

• NHM Writer One FREE application that helps you type in any Indian language (also takes care of Indic Unicode rendering in Windows XP/2003) developed by New Horizon Media
• Avro Keyboard Unicode Compliant FREE Bangla Typing Software for Windows, Linux and Ubuntu developed in Bangladesh. Supports a variety of typing methods including phonetic.
• To write Devanagari or Gujarati Script Devised by Dayashankar Joshi
• Romanized Nepali Unicode Keyboard developed by OOPSLite Technologies
• Lipikaar: If you can write it, you can type it. Simple, intuitive SMS-style method for typing 16 Indian languages on a regular keyboard.
• Tamil keyboard Type in Tamil in any Windows application
• e-Kalappai 3.0 Opensource GPL Tamil Keyboard Manager
• Indinator Indic language transliterator Free online tool (does not work), a download version is available as well.
• Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool Free desktop IME and web bookmarklets to type in বাংলা (Bengali), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), हिन्दी (Hindi), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), മലയാളം (Malayalam), मराठी (Marathi), ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Oriya), ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (Punjabi), தமிழ் (Tamil) and తెలుగు (Telugu) using free-form transliteration. Also includes a visual keyboard.
• [http://nepaliunicode.tk Online/offline Nepali Trasliteration
• Pada multilingual software supports Indian languages
• Google Indic Language Input Tool Free desktop IME to type in বাংলা (Bengali), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), हिन्दी (Hindi), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), മലയാളം (Malayalam), मराठी (Marathi), ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Oriya), ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (Punjabi), संस्कृतम् (Sanskrit), தமிழ் (Tamil), తెలుగు (Telugu) and اردو(Urdu). Favoured method is learning predictive transliteration from English, but a visual keyboard is also supported. It also supports user defined macros and and user defined schemes.