Help:Multilingual support (Indic)

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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
10.7/8
KDE
with
Qt
GNOME
with
Pango
9x/ME
or
NT
2000 XP
or
2003
XP
SP2
Vista 7 8/8.1
Devanagari Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Devanagari.png क + िकि Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes no Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Tamil Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Tamil.png க + ேகே needs
font
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes no Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gujarati Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Gujarati.png ક + િકિ Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes no no Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gurmukhi Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Gurmukhi.png ਕ + ਿਕਿ Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes no no Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Kannada Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Kannada.png ಕ + ಿಕಿ needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes Yes no Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Telugu Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Telugu.png య + ీయీ needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes Yes no no Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Bengali,
Assamese
Complex Text Rendering - Bengali.svg ক + িকি needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes Yes no no no Yes Yes Yes Yes
Malayalam Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Malayalam.png ക + െകെ needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes Yes no no no Yes Yes Yes Yes
Tibetan Examples of complex text rendering Tibetan.png ར + ྐ + ྱརྐྱ needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes needs
font
needs
font
no no no needs
patch
Yes Yes Yes
Sinhala Complex Text Rendering - Sinhala.svg ඵ + ේඵේ needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes Yes no no no needs
font
Yes Yes Yes
Oriya Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Oriya.png କ + େକେ needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes Yes no no no needs
font
Yes Yes Yes
Thai Complex Text Rendering - Thai.png ฐ + ูฐู Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes no Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Lao Complex Text Rendering - Lao.svg ກ + ົ + ້ກົ້ needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes Yes no no no needs
font
Yes Yes Yes
Khmer Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Khmer.svg ម + ្ + ស + ៅ → ម្សៅ needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes Yes no no no needs
font
needs
font
Yes Yes
Burmese Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Burmese.png + ဃြ needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes no needs
font
no no no needs
font
needs
font
needs
font
Yes
Javanese Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Javanese.png + + + + ꦧꦾꦺꦴꦂ unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown no no no Yes (8.1)
Balinese Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Balinese.png + + + + + ​ᬃᬩ᭄ᬬᭀ​ᬃ unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown
Sundanese Examples.of.complex.text.rendering.Sundanese.png + + + ᮘᮡᮦᮁ unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown unknown needs
font
needs
font
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 Devanagari script, use of InScript इन्स्क्रिप्ट keyboard is a permanent and easy solution. Inscript is standard developed by CDAC and approved by Government of India.

A bilingual InScript keyboard

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 [1], [2]. 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.

Indic text display and input support can be automatically installed without need of Windows XP CD by using a tool IndicXP (Lite). It installs Indic fonts, Uniscribe (CTL rendering engine) support and virtual keyboards for various Indic scripts.

Viewing Indic text (Manual method)

  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 Baraha IME or Google IME 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 Baraha IME 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 IndicXP Plus 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, Google Transliteration is an online Indian language typing tool which provides an online virtual 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.[1]
  • 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. The same applies to the default Tibetan font.

Complex text support is automatically enabled.

Viewing Indic text

Burmese

You do not need to do anything to enable viewing of Indic text, except Burmese script (examples: + ဃြ and မြန်မာအက္ခရာ) which needs a font not pre-installed on Vista. Follow the help provided in the template to the right.

Khmer

The pre-installed Khmer fonts in Windows Vista and Windows 7 are generally considered illegible because of their tiny default point. If desired 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 default hot key combination for switching between languages is Alt+ Shift.

This video clip can help you in understanding how to activate Wikipedia ULS feature for typing certain indic languages on wiki projects; Click on the 'cc to change the subtitle languages to Marathi, English, Sanskrit, Kokani,Ahirani.

The following software allows typing in Indian scripts:

Another alternative is User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb which provides a web-based keyboard that is integrated into Wikipedia and supports 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,[3] 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:

Additional fonts:

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. For Telugu input method using ukelele two types of keyboard layouts PraSankar has been developed by navataramgam team to encourage their readers to post comments in Telugu.

  • 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 appsepiphany 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 because of 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 Tamil 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

sudo apt-get install ttf-indic-fonts

For newer version of Debian and Ubuntu, Enter

sudo apt-get install fonts-indic
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 newer versions of this distribution (e.g. Debian Testing after August 2011), enter as root:

apt-get install fonts-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

Smart_Common_Input_Method 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 [4]

  • 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, Odia, 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.


Installing Tibetan fonts

The fonts above do not include Tibetan scripts used in Wikipedia, additional package needs to be emerged for those:

emerge tibetan-machine-font
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) [5].

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.

Slacko Puppy Linux

Slacko PPM (Puppy Package Manager) will install packages from the Slackware Repository, including the indic fonts package . If the package lists are up to date, and PPM is set to show the Slackware repository, searching for the word "indic" in PPM will show the package to click on if PPM is set to show the Slackware repository (There is no package for indic fonts in the Puppy Slacko repository .). Puppy Package Manager showing indic fonts package from Slackware 14.0 is already installed on Slacko Puppy Linux

Slackware

Slackware uses slapt-get instead of apt-get , and it is used the same way apt-get is used in Debian based systems . By following the Debian instructions above for using apt-get, one should be able to figure out how to install indic fonts with slapt-get . (i.e. Just do the same thing except add the letters "sl" at the beginning .)

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:

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.

References

External links

Other information

Fonts

Other input methods

Online transliteration/input

Browser plugins

Installable software

Cross-platform
  • Pada Multilingual software supports Indian languages - Both Windows and Linux versions.
  • Avro Keyboard Unicode-compliant Bangla typing software for Windows, Linux and Ubuntu. Supports a variety of typing methods, including phonetic.
  • Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool Windows-only desktop IME and cross-platform 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.
Windows-only
Possibly defunct