Note: This article is not a comprehensive review of all the features in Fedora 10 beta.
The Fedora 10 beta or more precisely Fedora 9.92 was released on 30th September 2008. I decided to give it a try using Xen virtualization in Fedora 9, as I don't want to install a "bleeding edge" distro in my desktop. But unfortunately, Fedora 9 has an issue with Xen Virtualization and the only work around was to get it installed through qemu. The documentation at the Fedora wiki is enough to get it started.
However, I had a bad luck with with CD-ROM image, except that I was able to run anaconda. The first thing I noticed is the Malayalam strings in anaconda interface was not properly displayed. I discussed this matter in the IRC channel of SMC, and filed a bug in Redhat Bugzilla. I was also struck with another bug when I tried to disable the installation media and use only the Rawhide repository. The good news is that Fedora developers responded quickly to the two bug reports. Since I didn't bothered to download minimal set of the CD-ROM images, I decided to proceed with netinstall image available at Fedora download server.
A fresh installation attempt using the netinstall image was problematic. But after several failed attempts I could connect to the fedora mirrors and start the installation. The installation took more than 4 hours. All the packages where downloaded from Internet and qemu environment was also slow. At the end anaconda hanged with the message "installing kernel-2.6.xx... ". I just closed the qemu window and boot the newly installed system using the following command:
# qemu fedora.qcow -boot c -net nic -net user -m 512 -localtime -no-kqemu
The graphical boot loader, rhgb has been replaced by Plymouth and if you press ESC key, then you can view the entire boot messages. After several minutes of wait, I was able to login to the new Fedora 10 desktop. may be the virtualized environment degraded the performance of the desktop.
As soon as I logged in, the first major change I noticed is the new Echo-Icon theme. The icon set is great and gave the desktop an elegant look and feel.
Malayalam Support
I was curious about the Malayalam rendering and language support. Fortunately, Malayalam rendering was perfect with the patches from SMC and the new Malayalam font, Meera developed by SMC itself. Mozilla Firefox 3 and OpenOffice.org 3.0 rendered Malayalam perfectly. However, in OpenOffice there were some issues with some complex conjucts. But I won't think that these are used frequently in Malayalam content.
The font size problem which was a major issue in the prior release was resolved and it's really cool to see Malayalam on the desktop without any rendering errors.
Fedora also has 7 other unicode Malayalam fonts - smc-anjalioldlipi, smc-kalyani(previously MalOtf), smc-rachana, smc-raghumalayalam, smc-dhyuthi, samyak-malayalam and lohit-malayalam. However, I'm not sure whether the issues with lohit-malayalam is resolved.
The input method configuration is also very easy. The im-chooser application guided me to configure all the required input methods in different languages. There are 4 Input schemes for Malayalam - inscript, itrans, mozhi and swanalekha.
I think Fedora 10 may be the first GNU/Linux distribution with complete Malayalam rendering and input methods.
Other Applications
Fedora 10 comes loaded with GNOME-2.24 which provides many robust desktop applications. The prominent change is the inclusion of Empathy instant messenger which supports gtalk(voice and video), yahoo and several other IM protocols.
I was also curious about the webkit powered Epiphany. But the webkit switch was not complete and the version 2.24 still uses the Gecko engine. Visit here for more details.
This release also has better webcam support through the GNOME application called Cheese.
There is also some menu re-arrangements in the new desktop. The Dictionary application have been moved to the Office section, earlier it was included in the Accessories section.
To summarize, I believe that Fedora 10 is a distribution which is worth waiting for. Here is the schedule. The stable release is planned for November 2008.
Showing posts with label Malayalam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Malayalam. Show all posts
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Friday, 5 September 2008
സി-ഡാക്കിന്റെ ക്രൂരകൃത്യങ്ങള്
കഴിഞ്ഞ ആഴ്ചയില് ഇന്ത്യയിലെ സ്വതന്ത്രസോഫ്റ്റ്വെയര് സമൂഹത്തില് സജീവ ചര്ച്ചയ്ക്കു ഹേതുവായത് ഒരു കേന്ദ്ര സര്ക്കാര് സ്ഥാപനമാണ്. കമ്പ്യൂട്ടറിലും അനുബന്ധ മേഖലകളിലും ഗവേഷണവും വികസനവും (Research & Development) നടത്തുന്ന സി-ഡാക് ചില സ്വതന്ത്രസോഫ്റ്റ്വെയറുകളില് നടത്തുന്ന വിഭജനമാണ്(forking) ചര്ച്ചാവിഷയമായത്.
സി-ഡാക്കിന്റെ ചെന്നൈ കേന്ദ്രം ഗ്നോം പണിയിടത്തിനു വേണ്ടി മലയാളം അടക്കമുള്ള ഇന്ത്യന് ഭാഷകളില് തര്ജ്ജമ ചെയ്തതാണ് എറ്റവും ഒടുവില് വാര്ത്തയായത്. സി-ഡാക് പരിഭാഷപ്പെടുത്തി എന്നു അവകാശപ്പെടുന്ന പല ഫയലുകളും സ്വതന്ത്ര മലയാളം കമ്പ്യൂട്ടിങ് എന്ന കൂട്ടായ്മ മുന്പ് ചെയ്തിട്ടുള്ളതാണ്. പല വാക്കുകള്ക്കും വിചിത്രമായ തര്ജ്ജമയാണ് സി-ഡാക്കിലെ പരിഭാഷകര് കണ്ടെത്തിയിരിക്കുന്നത്. ഏറ്റവും നല്ല ഉദാഹരണം Free Software എന്നതിന്റെ തര്ജ്ജമയാണ്. "സൌജന്യ സോഫ്റ്റ്വെയര്" എന്നാണ് സി-ഡാക്ക് കണ്ടെത്തിയ വാക്ക്. സി-ഡാക്കിന്റെ ഭാഷയോടുള്ള വെല്ലുവിളി ഇവിടെ കാണാം : http://downloads.bosslinux.in/Translated_Po_files/Translated_Po_files_18_languages/malayalam%20ml/
ഇതിനു മുന്പ് ഡെബിയന് ഗ്നു/ലിനക്ലിനെ വിഭജിച്ച് ബോസ് ലിനക്സ്, ഓപ്പണ്ഓഫീസിനെ വിഭജിച്ച് ഭാരതീയ ഓപ്പണ്ഓഫീസ് എന്നിങ്ങനെ രണ്ട് "സൌജന്യ സോഫ്റ്റ്വെയര്" സി-ഡാക്കിന്റെ ബാംഗ്ളൂര് കേന്ദ്രം പുറത്തിറക്കുകയുണ്ടായി. ഭാരതീയ ഓപ്പണ്ഓഫീസിന്റെ Credits and Contributions പേജില് യഥാര്ത്ഥ ഓപ്പണ്ഓഫീസിന്റെ പരാമര്ശം പോലുമില്ല.
മേല്പറഞ്ഞ എല്ലാ സംരംഭങ്ങള്ക്കും സജീവമായ ഒരു സമൂഹം ഉണ്ടെന്നിരിക്കെ, നാട്ടുകാരുടെ നികുതിപ്പണം ഇത്തരം അര്ത്ഥശൂന്യമായ പദ്ധതികളില് നിക്ഷേപിക്കുന്നതിനെ കുറിച്ച് സര്ക്കാര് ഗൌരവമായി ആലോചിക്കേണ്ടതാണ്. സി-ഡാക്കിനു സ്വതന്ത്രസോഫ്റ്റ്വെയറിനെ പിന്തുണയ്ക്കണമമെന്നു ആത്മാര്ത്ഥമായി ആഗ്രഹമുണ്ടെങ്കില് സംരംഭങ്ങളുടെ യഥാര്ത്ഥ സമൂഹവുമായി(upstream community) ചേര്ന്നു പ്രവര്ത്തിക്കേണ്ടതാണ്. അല്ലാതെ, സംരംഭങ്ങളുടെ വിഭജനം ഒരു തരത്തിലും സ്വതന്ത്രസോഫ്റ്റ്വെയര് സമൂഹത്തിനു ഗുണം ചെയ്യില്ല.
സി-ഡാക്കിന്റെ ചെന്നൈ കേന്ദ്രം ഗ്നോം പണിയിടത്തിനു വേണ്ടി മലയാളം അടക്കമുള്ള ഇന്ത്യന് ഭാഷകളില് തര്ജ്ജമ ചെയ്തതാണ് എറ്റവും ഒടുവില് വാര്ത്തയായത്. സി-ഡാക് പരിഭാഷപ്പെടുത്തി എന്നു അവകാശപ്പെടുന്ന പല ഫയലുകളും സ്വതന്ത്ര മലയാളം കമ്പ്യൂട്ടിങ് എന്ന കൂട്ടായ്മ മുന്പ് ചെയ്തിട്ടുള്ളതാണ്. പല വാക്കുകള്ക്കും വിചിത്രമായ തര്ജ്ജമയാണ് സി-ഡാക്കിലെ പരിഭാഷകര് കണ്ടെത്തിയിരിക്കുന്നത്. ഏറ്റവും നല്ല ഉദാഹരണം Free Software എന്നതിന്റെ തര്ജ്ജമയാണ്. "സൌജന്യ സോഫ്റ്റ്വെയര്" എന്നാണ് സി-ഡാക്ക് കണ്ടെത്തിയ വാക്ക്. സി-ഡാക്കിന്റെ ഭാഷയോടുള്ള വെല്ലുവിളി ഇവിടെ കാണാം : http://downloads.bosslinux.in/Translated_Po_files/Translated_Po_files_18_languages/malayalam%20ml/
ഇതിനു മുന്പ് ഡെബിയന് ഗ്നു/ലിനക്ലിനെ വിഭജിച്ച് ബോസ് ലിനക്സ്, ഓപ്പണ്ഓഫീസിനെ വിഭജിച്ച് ഭാരതീയ ഓപ്പണ്ഓഫീസ് എന്നിങ്ങനെ രണ്ട് "സൌജന്യ സോഫ്റ്റ്വെയര്" സി-ഡാക്കിന്റെ ബാംഗ്ളൂര് കേന്ദ്രം പുറത്തിറക്കുകയുണ്ടായി. ഭാരതീയ ഓപ്പണ്ഓഫീസിന്റെ Credits and Contributions പേജില് യഥാര്ത്ഥ ഓപ്പണ്ഓഫീസിന്റെ പരാമര്ശം പോലുമില്ല.
മേല്പറഞ്ഞ എല്ലാ സംരംഭങ്ങള്ക്കും സജീവമായ ഒരു സമൂഹം ഉണ്ടെന്നിരിക്കെ, നാട്ടുകാരുടെ നികുതിപ്പണം ഇത്തരം അര്ത്ഥശൂന്യമായ പദ്ധതികളില് നിക്ഷേപിക്കുന്നതിനെ കുറിച്ച് സര്ക്കാര് ഗൌരവമായി ആലോചിക്കേണ്ടതാണ്. സി-ഡാക്കിനു സ്വതന്ത്രസോഫ്റ്റ്വെയറിനെ പിന്തുണയ്ക്കണമമെന്നു ആത്മാര്ത്ഥമായി ആഗ്രഹമുണ്ടെങ്കില് സംരംഭങ്ങളുടെ യഥാര്ത്ഥ സമൂഹവുമായി(upstream community) ചേര്ന്നു പ്രവര്ത്തിക്കേണ്ടതാണ്. അല്ലാതെ, സംരംഭങ്ങളുടെ വിഭജനം ഒരു തരത്തിലും സ്വതന്ത്രസോഫ്റ്റ്വെയര് സമൂഹത്തിനു ഗുണം ചെയ്യില്ല.
Friday, 8 August 2008
One Year Old Bug Passed Away
A popular Malayalam rendering bug, known as the Karkkodakan bug, in GNOME which was active for 1 year, 2 months and 10 days was resolved last Wednesday(6th August 2008). This was the last known bug in GNOME Malayalam rendering. Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) have come with a solution some months before, but the GNOME community didn't accepted the patch since the solution was not perfect. However, SMC was maintaining patched packages for all the popular distributions, which is no longer needed. Hopefully, the next major release of Fedora and Debian shall have 100% bug free Malayalam rendering in GNOME.
The bug was basically an issue with the Pango package which caused the incorrect rendering. The technical details and discussion can be found here. The bug was reported by Praveen A, and the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing team members actively participated in providing test cases and testing. It was one of the most complicated bugs in Malayalam rendering and several people including Sayamindu, Suresh and Baiju M contributed patches. The submitted patches have several rounds of review and finally the patch submitted by Rahul Bhalero got accepted.
A special thanks to all the people who commented, tested and helped to resolve the bug.
Praveen A
Hiran V
Sayamindu Dasgupta
Ani Peter
Santhosh Thottingal
Rahul Bhalero
Behdad Esfahbod
Baiju M
Suruma
Cibu C J
Mahesh T Pai
This was an achievement of SMC, after the KDE Malayalam Translation campaign.
Even though, the bugs in GNOME are completely solved, there are still bugs reported OpenOffice.org and Qt. The complete status of Malayalam rendering issues are available here
P.S : SMC is organizing a release party at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala on 9th and 10th August 2008 to celebrate the official inclusion of Malayalam in KDE-4.1. More details are here
The bug was basically an issue with the Pango package which caused the incorrect rendering. The technical details and discussion can be found here. The bug was reported by Praveen A, and the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing team members actively participated in providing test cases and testing. It was one of the most complicated bugs in Malayalam rendering and several people including Sayamindu, Suresh and Baiju M contributed patches. The submitted patches have several rounds of review and finally the patch submitted by Rahul Bhalero got accepted.
A special thanks to all the people who commented, tested and helped to resolve the bug.
Praveen A
Hiran V
Sayamindu Dasgupta
Ani Peter
Santhosh Thottingal
Rahul Bhalero
Behdad Esfahbod
Baiju M
Suruma
Cibu C J
Mahesh T Pai
This was an achievement of SMC, after the KDE Malayalam Translation campaign.
Even though, the bugs in GNOME are completely solved, there are still bugs reported OpenOffice.org and Qt. The complete status of Malayalam rendering issues are available here
P.S : SMC is organizing a release party at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala on 9th and 10th August 2008 to celebrate the official inclusion of Malayalam in KDE-4.1. More details are here
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Tired of searching for Malayalam Unicode fonts
Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) has come up with a list of beautiful Malayalam fonts licensed under GNU GPL (excluding AnjaliOldLipi which is in Public Domain). All the latest versions of Rachana, Meera, Dyuthi, RaghuMalayalam, Suruma and AnjaliOldLipi can be previewed and downloaded from this page.
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/SMC/Fonts
All the fonts except RaghuMalayalam are traditional fonts. RaghuMalayalam font was designed for the Typewriter script. Meera font is being used by two popular Malayalam dailies, viz Mathrubhumi and Mangalam. Rachana font released by Richard Stallman, is the default font in UbuntuLinux and Debian GNU/Linux. Currently these fonts are maintained and packaged by SMC and available for popular distributions such as Debian and Fedora. Thanks to Santhosh for setting up the page.
P.S: In addition to the fonts, you can also read the beautiful nostalgic poem by O N V Kurup.
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/SMC/Fonts
All the fonts except RaghuMalayalam are traditional fonts. RaghuMalayalam font was designed for the Typewriter script. Meera font is being used by two popular Malayalam dailies, viz Mathrubhumi and Mangalam. Rachana font released by Richard Stallman, is the default font in UbuntuLinux and Debian GNU/Linux. Currently these fonts are maintained and packaged by SMC and available for popular distributions such as Debian and Fedora. Thanks to Santhosh for setting up the page.
P.S: In addition to the fonts, you can also read the beautiful nostalgic poem by O N V Kurup.
Monday, 9 June 2008
Why do we need this font?
Recently I upgraded my Fedora desktop to the latest Fedora 9(Sulphur). There are several features which are worth mentioning, but I was more concerned about the Malayalam rendering issues. I have been an ardent fan of GNOME for 7 years, but this time also it disappointed me in Malayalam rendering. As an alternative I tried Konqueror(KDE-4.0.4) but still it had problems. Here is the screenshot:
But I was amazed when I removed the lohit-malayalam-fonts-2.2.1-2.fc9 which is the default Malayalam font in Fedora. See the difference here:
Even some of the Karkkodakan problem is resolved in konqueror:
I was wondering why the Fedora community is repeatedly including the buggy fonts as default, when there are better alternatives. I think, for every Malayalam user who uses Fedora 9 desktop, the first command he should learn is :
# yum remove lohit-fonts-malayalam
I think, until the pango issues are resolved, it's better to use Konqueror as the default browser.
P.S: To install Konqueror alone, just run the following command:
# yum install kdebase
But I was amazed when I removed the lohit-malayalam-fonts-2.2.1-2.fc9 which is the default Malayalam font in Fedora. See the difference here:
Even some of the Karkkodakan problem is resolved in konqueror:
I was wondering why the Fedora community is repeatedly including the buggy fonts as default, when there are better alternatives. I think, for every Malayalam user who uses Fedora 9 desktop, the first command he should learn is :# yum remove lohit-fonts-malayalam
I think, until the pango issues are resolved, it's better to use Konqueror as the default browser.
P.S: To install Konqueror alone, just run the following command:
# yum install kdebase
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Padma extension for Firefox 3
Padma is a Mozilla Firefox extension for transforming indic between public and proprietary formats. This extension is a great boon for users of Indian languages such as Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, etc.. However, this extension doesn't work in beta version of FireFox 3. Thanks to Mr. Anil Kumar who has hacked this extension to make it work in Firefox 3. Please see this post. The modified extension is tested only in Malayalam websites and works fine.
Update : Padma development team has released an update for padma. You can download it from here : http://downloads.mozdev.org/padma/padma-0.4.13.xpi
Update : Padma development team has released an update for padma. You can download it from here : http://downloads.mozdev.org/padma/padma-0.4.13.xpi
Friday, 2 May 2008
പ്രവീണ് സത്പുതെയ്ക്കും രാഹുല് ബലേറോയ്ക്കും അയച്ച മറുപടി
മലയാളം യൂണിക്കോഡ് ഫോണ്ടുകളായ മീരയും ലോഹിതും തമ്മില് പ്രവീണ് സത്പുതെ ഒരു താരതമ്യം നടത്തുകയുണ്ടായി. എന്നാല് പ്രസ്തുത ബ്ളോഗിലേക്കുള്ള കമന്റുകള് അദ്ദേഹം മോഡറേറ്റ് ചെയ്യാന് തീരുമാനിച്ചു. അതുകൊണ്ട് , അതിനുള്ള മറുപടി ഇവിടെ പോസ്റ്റു ചെയ്യുന്നു. ഇത് മെയ് 1 ന് ഇവിടെ പോസ്റ്റു ചെയ്തതാണ്.
രാഹുല് ഇതൊന്നും കണ്ടില്ലേ ?
242016
441654
അതോ ഇതൊന്നും "ബഗ്ഗ്" എന്ന വിശേഷണത്തില് ഉള്പ്പെടില്ലേ ? മലയാളം റെന്ഡറിങ്ങില് നിലവിലുള്ള 2 പ്രധാന പ്രശ്നങ്ങളാണ് ഈ 2 ബഗ്ഗിലും വിവരിച്ചിട്ടുള്ളത്. ലോഹിതിന്റെ പ്രശ്നങ്ങളും ഇതില് ഉള്പ്പെട്ടിട്ടുണ്ട്. മലയാളത്തില് ഒരു ചൊല്ലുണ്ട്: "ഉറങ്ങുന്നവരെ ഉണര്ത്താന് എളുപ്പമാണ്. എന്നാല് ഉറക്കം നടിക്കുന്നവരെ ഒരിക്കലും ഉണര്ത്താന് പറ്റില്ല". അല്ലെങ്കില് റിപ്പോര്ട്ട് ചെയ്തുതിന്റെ ഒന്നാം വാര്ഷികം ആഘോഷിക്കാന് പോകുന്ന ഈ ബഗ്ഗുകള്ക്ക് ഒരു പരിഹാരം ഉണ്ടായിട്ടുകൂടി അതു നടപ്പിലാക്കാത്തത് എന്തു കൊണ്ടാണ് ?
5 കോടി ജനങ്ങള് സംസാരിക്കുന്ന ഭാഷയുടെ ലിപി എങ്ങനെ വേണമെന്ന് തീരുമാനിക്കുന്നത് ഒരിക്കലും മലയാളം ഉപയോഗിച്ചിട്ടില്ലാത്തവര്. കഷ്ടം !!!
It's ridiculous that people who don't know or use Malayalam are commenting about Malayalam font and rendering issues. So I purposefully posted this in Malayalam.
രാഹുല് ഇതൊന്നും കണ്ടില്ലേ ?
242016
441654
അതോ ഇതൊന്നും "ബഗ്ഗ്" എന്ന വിശേഷണത്തില് ഉള്പ്പെടില്ലേ ? മലയാളം റെന്ഡറിങ്ങില് നിലവിലുള്ള 2 പ്രധാന പ്രശ്നങ്ങളാണ് ഈ 2 ബഗ്ഗിലും വിവരിച്ചിട്ടുള്ളത്. ലോഹിതിന്റെ പ്രശ്നങ്ങളും ഇതില് ഉള്പ്പെട്ടിട്ടുണ്ട്. മലയാളത്തില് ഒരു ചൊല്ലുണ്ട്: "ഉറങ്ങുന്നവരെ ഉണര്ത്താന് എളുപ്പമാണ്. എന്നാല് ഉറക്കം നടിക്കുന്നവരെ ഒരിക്കലും ഉണര്ത്താന് പറ്റില്ല". അല്ലെങ്കില് റിപ്പോര്ട്ട് ചെയ്തുതിന്റെ ഒന്നാം വാര്ഷികം ആഘോഷിക്കാന് പോകുന്ന ഈ ബഗ്ഗുകള്ക്ക് ഒരു പരിഹാരം ഉണ്ടായിട്ടുകൂടി അതു നടപ്പിലാക്കാത്തത് എന്തു കൊണ്ടാണ് ?
5 കോടി ജനങ്ങള് സംസാരിക്കുന്ന ഭാഷയുടെ ലിപി എങ്ങനെ വേണമെന്ന് തീരുമാനിക്കുന്നത് ഒരിക്കലും മലയാളം ഉപയോഗിച്ചിട്ടില്ലാത്തവര്. കഷ്ടം !!!
It's ridiculous that people who don't know or use Malayalam are commenting about Malayalam font and rendering issues. So I purposefully posted this in Malayalam.
Monday, 28 April 2008
Ubuntu 8.04 - Review by a Malayalam User
I was very much excited when I saw the announcement about the new release of Ubuntu in the mailing list and curious to give it a try. The new release, according to http://www.ubuntu.com is a Long Term Supported(LTS) version for 5 years and has numerous features including virtualization. It took almost 7 hours to download and upgrade the latest Ubuntu 8.04, code named Hardy Heron, in my office desktop. I preferred network upgrade since I don't want to affect my office tasks during upgrade process. The download started on Friday(25th April) and then I have to suspend it for a while and completed on Saturday. (Even though Saturday was a holiday, I couldn't wait till Monday :) ).
The upgrade completed successfully, but the new Ubuntu booted up with the old kernel which was installed with 7.10. I have to modify the grub configuration file in Fedora 8 to include Ubuntu in the grub. So I copied the following lines to the /etc/grub.conf and it was done.
I did another reboot to pick the latest kernel with 8.04 and now I am ready with the login screen.
Cool desktop and Applications:
The artistic login screen and the desktop wallpapers are appealing and cool. The panel has a new icon named Search Tracker which allowed to search the desktop files and emails. It's a very user friendly and unlike other GNU/linux searching tools, it was very fast also. The new desktop came with the latest version of OpenOffice-2.4 and Mozilla FireFox-3 (beta 5). Even though , Firefox is still in beta, the new location bar search and unicode URLs are noticeable features. It seems that firefox is much faster than it's predecessors.
The desktop effects have been enabled by default and this gives more dynamic look for the desktop. In earlier versions, the desktop effects tend to consume more system resources, but 8.04 has improved a lot I didn't realised any performance issues. However, if you are upgrading from 7.10, then you probably need to delete all the preference files(files startiing with . (dot)) in your home directory and files related with your username in /tmp.
Disappointment for Malayalam users
I was very keen about the Malayalam support in the new release. Recently the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) community have conducted aggressive campaigns for translating the interface and as a result more than 80% of the translation has been completed in GNOME. See the screenshot:
The new Ubuntu is not that much appealing to Malayalam desktop users. However experienced user can tweak the system so that it correctly renders the language. The only noticeable feature is the Firefox's ability to interpret the URLs in unicode. Earlier the unicode URLs seems to be a junk of characters and even techies can't interpret it correctly. I'm sure it's a wonderful feature for non-english users.
The Malayalam support in 8.04 is not installed by default and the first step is to install it from System --> Administration --> Language Support. Ubuntu will then automatically install the packages related to Malayalam including m17n, aspell and Malayalam fonts.
Unfortunately, the Malayalam rendering in 8.04 is very bad and when I opened the Malayalam wikipedia in Firefox most of the sections are unreadable. See the screenshot :
The rendering issues are mainly due to font issues and the Malayalam fonts developed by SMC, which is available for debian, resolved majority of the issues. I have to manually download the fonts from the debian repository and install them using the dpkg command.
Here is the screenshot with Meera fonts maintained by SMC:
Now the rendering is perfect except this bug.
Since the rendering was OK, my next objective was to set up the Malayalam input in the desktop. Of course this is one of the failure with 8.04. The scim-m17n packages where not installed by default and I have to manually install them using the Synaptic Package Manager. I searched for "scim-m17n" and then applied it. SCIM was then configured using System-->Preferences-->SCIM Input Method The irritating stuff is that I have to start scim manually before typing anything in Malayalam. The following commands helped me to set up SCIM in startup:
Reference : http://www.mrbass.org/linux/ubuntu/scim/
The scim setup was complete, but again there were problems when using ZWJ and ZWNJ. Both these characters were not properly identified and this caused problem with chillus when typing Malayalam. I was using the default inscript tables by scim, and it had some bugs. To correct this I have to install another package named m17n-contrib which also has a transliteration based input method. I searched for "m17n-contrib" in Synaptic Package Manager and applied it and then I have to relogin to effect the changes in scim. Thanks to Santhosh Thottingal who guided me to troubleshoot this issue.
The Dejavu and freefont packages installed in Ubuntu has included Malayalam glyphs but it seems that they have some bugs. This may prevent rendering Malayalam perfectly in OpenOffice Writer and rich text boxes in Firefox. Even though it's not recommended, finally, I have to remove them from the system.
The Padma extension, which is used to read Malayalam news papers in dynamic font, is not supported in Firefox 3beta5. This turned to be another disappointment as a Malayalam user. Now, I may have to search for the Padma patch developed by Sri. Anil Kumar K V, one of my favourite teachers :).
Even though the issues discussed above can be solved easily, these are real obstacles for an average Malayalee desktop user. I hope that the issues may be resolved soon and shortly we may have a complete GNU/Linux desktop.
The upgrade completed successfully, but the new Ubuntu booted up with the old kernel which was installed with 7.10. I have to modify the grub configuration file in Fedora 8 to include Ubuntu in the grub. So I copied the following lines to the /etc/grub.conf and it was done.
title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=9c040612-4dbd-4dd8-9845-9a1050d7cbfe ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
I did another reboot to pick the latest kernel with 8.04 and now I am ready with the login screen.
Cool desktop and Applications:
The artistic login screen and the desktop wallpapers are appealing and cool. The panel has a new icon named Search Tracker which allowed to search the desktop files and emails. It's a very user friendly and unlike other GNU/linux searching tools, it was very fast also. The new desktop came with the latest version of OpenOffice-2.4 and Mozilla FireFox-3 (beta 5). Even though , Firefox is still in beta, the new location bar search and unicode URLs are noticeable features. It seems that firefox is much faster than it's predecessors.
The desktop effects have been enabled by default and this gives more dynamic look for the desktop. In earlier versions, the desktop effects tend to consume more system resources, but 8.04 has improved a lot I didn't realised any performance issues. However, if you are upgrading from 7.10, then you probably need to delete all the preference files(files startiing with . (dot)) in your home directory and files related with your username in /tmp.
Disappointment for Malayalam users
I was very keen about the Malayalam support in the new release. Recently the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) community have conducted aggressive campaigns for translating the interface and as a result more than 80% of the translation has been completed in GNOME. See the screenshot:
The new Ubuntu is not that much appealing to Malayalam desktop users. However experienced user can tweak the system so that it correctly renders the language. The only noticeable feature is the Firefox's ability to interpret the URLs in unicode. Earlier the unicode URLs seems to be a junk of characters and even techies can't interpret it correctly. I'm sure it's a wonderful feature for non-english users.
The Malayalam support in 8.04 is not installed by default and the first step is to install it from System --> Administration --> Language Support. Ubuntu will then automatically install the packages related to Malayalam including m17n, aspell and Malayalam fonts.
Unfortunately, the Malayalam rendering in 8.04 is very bad and when I opened the Malayalam wikipedia in Firefox most of the sections are unreadable. See the screenshot :
The rendering issues are mainly due to font issues and the Malayalam fonts developed by SMC, which is available for debian, resolved majority of the issues. I have to manually download the fonts from the debian repository and install them using the dpkg command.
# dpkg -i ttf-malayalam-fonts_0.5.2_all.deb
Here is the screenshot with Meera fonts maintained by SMC:
Now the rendering is perfect except this bug.
Since the rendering was OK, my next objective was to set up the Malayalam input in the desktop. Of course this is one of the failure with 8.04. The scim-m17n packages where not installed by default and I have to manually install them using the Synaptic Package Manager. I searched for "scim-m17n" and then applied it. SCIM was then configured using System-->Preferences-->SCIM Input Method The irritating stuff is that I have to start scim manually before typing anything in Malayalam. The following commands helped me to set up SCIM in startup:
sudo -i
touch /etc/X11/Xsession.d/74custom-scim_startup
chmod 646 /etc/X11/Xsession.d/74custom-scim_startup
echo 'export XMODIFIERS="@im=SCIM"' >> /etc/X11/Xsession.d/74custom-scim_startup
echo 'export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"' >> /etc/X11/Xsession.d/74custom-scim_startup
echo 'export XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"' >> /etc/X11/Xsession.d/74custom-scim_startup
echo 'export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"' >> /etc/X11/Xsession.d/74custom-scim_startup
chmod 644 /etc/X11/Xsession.d/74custom-scim_startup
Reference : http://www.mrbass.org/linux/ubuntu/scim/
The scim setup was complete, but again there were problems when using ZWJ and ZWNJ. Both these characters were not properly identified and this caused problem with chillus when typing Malayalam. I was using the default inscript tables by scim, and it had some bugs. To correct this I have to install another package named m17n-contrib which also has a transliteration based input method. I searched for "m17n-contrib" in Synaptic Package Manager and applied it and then I have to relogin to effect the changes in scim. Thanks to Santhosh Thottingal who guided me to troubleshoot this issue.
The Dejavu and freefont packages installed in Ubuntu has included Malayalam glyphs but it seems that they have some bugs. This may prevent rendering Malayalam perfectly in OpenOffice Writer and rich text boxes in Firefox. Even though it's not recommended, finally, I have to remove them from the system.
The Padma extension, which is used to read Malayalam news papers in dynamic font, is not supported in Firefox 3beta5. This turned to be another disappointment as a Malayalam user. Now, I may have to search for the Padma patch developed by Sri. Anil Kumar K V, one of my favourite teachers :).
Even though the issues discussed above can be solved easily, these are real obstacles for an average Malayalee desktop user. I hope that the issues may be resolved soon and shortly we may have a complete GNU/Linux desktop.
Monday, 12 November 2007
Experimenting with Fedora 8
The Fedora Community released the latest version of Fedora on Thursday, 8th November 2007. The new Fedora 8 came with numerous enhancements and features and I was thrilled to start experimenting the new distro. Since I don't want to hinder my work at the office, I tried to upgrade my desktop using YUM. The upgrade instructions can be found here : YumUpgradeFaq
The upgrade process was smooth, except it took too much time, because of slow Internet connection. The process took place in one of the text console, and I was able to work on the desktop without any problem. The process took about 6 hours and then I rebooted the machine.
The desktop graphics looks very cool and nice. But there are couple of issues that I had to came across with the new desktop. Some of them are listed below:
1. Unable to set the Screen Resolution
But I was struck with the screen resolution in the newly upgraded machine. I tried to set the resolution to 1024x768, but each time I login, the screen resolution immediately changed to 800x600 after a while. I had a Intel Original Motherboard and /etc/sysconfig/hwconf said that the Graphical Controller is "Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated Graphics Controller".
I tried to upgrade the kernel and different options in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. But all the experiments failed. Finally, with the help of the guys from #fedora@freenode.net I tried to install 915resolution. After installing 915resolution using YUM, I have to reconfigure the display and now the screen resolution issue is solved. Thanks to the guys at #fedora.
Info: The Summary in the 915resolution rpm package says the reason:
Intel video BIOS hack to support certain resolutions. The upgrade process was smooth, except it took too much time, because of slow Internet connection. The process took place in one of the text console, and I was able to work on the desktop without any problem. The process took about 6 hours and then I rebooted the machine.
The desktop graphics looks very cool and nice. But there are couple of issues that I had to came across with the new desktop. Some of them are listed below:
1. Unable to set the Screen Resolution
But I was struck with the screen resolution in the newly upgraded machine. I tried to set the resolution to 1024x768, but each time I login, the screen resolution immediately changed to 800x600 after a while. I had a Intel Original Motherboard and /etc/sysconfig/hwconf said that the Graphical Controller is "Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated Graphics Controller".
I tried to upgrade the kernel and different options in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. But all the experiments failed. Finally, with the help of the guys from #fedora@freenode.net I tried to install 915resolution. After installing 915resolution using YUM, I have to reconfigure the display and now the screen resolution issue is solved. Thanks to the guys at #fedora.
Info: The Summary in the 915resolution rpm package says the reason:
915resolution is a tool to modify the video BIOS of the 800 and 900 series Intel graphics chipsets. This includes the 845G, 855G, and 865G chipsets, as well as 915G, 915GM, and 945G chipsets. This modification is necessary to allow the display of certain graphics resolutions for an Xorg or XFree86 graphics server.
915resolution's modifications of the BIOS are transient. There is no risk of permanent modification of the BIOS. This also means that 915resolution must be run every time the computer boots inorder for it's changes to take effect.
915resolution is derived from the tool 855resolution. However, the code differs substantially. 915resolution's code base is much simpler. 915resolution also allows the modification of bits per pixel.
2. Too Small desktop Fonts in GNOME-2.20
Fedora 8 uses GNOME-2.20 and I was faced with unusual(small) size of the fonts in the desktop and Google fetched me to the fedoraforums.org. The small fonts issue can be resolved by setting the default font dpi to 96 (This value can be found at /etc/X11/Xresources, the Xft.dpi: 96). The exact reason why this happens in GNOME is still unknown to me. May be I have to dig the gnome bugzilla.
Apart from the font issue, the GNOME desktop looks extraordinary, one of the best experience ever had, since I started using it on 2001.
3. Reading and Typing Malayalam
I was very much disappointed when I accessed the Malayalam Wikipedia page in Firefox. In Fedora 7, there were some issues, but in Fedora 8 it was really worse. The default Malayalam font used in Fedora 8 was lohit-malayalam and I removed it and installed Rachana-g02, but it didn't helped. This was a known bug(#242016) in lohit-malayalam and pango in Fedora 7 and 8, and I have added some screenshots for a comparison of the issues.
With guidance from the Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) community I tried the Suruma patch. Since there was no Suruma patch for Pango-1.18, I tried patch4pango-1.16.4.
Installing Suruma was very easy, I need to just run the install script and the installation wizard guided me to complete the operation. Then I installed the Rachana-g02 fonts which render traditional Malayalam glyphs.
To install Rachana fonts, download the fonts from here
Copy the fonts files(*.ttf) to /usr/share/fonts/malayalam-sm/
Change to /usr/share/fonts/malayalam-sm and run the following commands
# cd /usr/share/fonts/malayalam-sm
# mkfontscale
# mkfontsdir
# chkfontpath -a /usr/share/fonts/malayalam-sm
# fc-cache
Open your Mozilla Firefox and access http://ml.wikipedia.org to check whether the fonts are correctly displayed.
In order to type Malayalam, you should first set the Input Method:
To chose the Input method go to System --> Preferences -->Personal --> Input Method.
Enable SCIM and now click the Input Method Preference :
In the Global Setup you can configure the trigger key, which is CTRL+SPACE by default. In the IMEngine menu, you have to chose which languages you need support. You can also chose transliteration or the inscript method. Apply all the changes and re-login to your desktop. If everything is OK, then you will be able to read and type Malayalam in your desktop.
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