[Kmfl-devel] Installaing KMFL in current distros - Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva, SuSe and Fedora

[K. S. <sk...@gm...>]

Doug

After a long gap, I started a few weeks back to test kmfl for tamil
inputting using couple of keymaps I put together in late 2005 and
2006. For programs like KBABEL on ubuntu I find kmfl  as backend to
scim work well while scim-tables and scim-m17n have problems. I am now
in contact with Mr. Muguntharaj leader of Thamizha.com whose
tavultsoft implementation of e-kalappai with many tamil and one
Malayalam keymaps is very popular among Windows users. We are working
to port them to KMFL on Linux platforms.

Here I present my recent experiences in installing kmfl components in
different current Linux distros. Seek your feedback on problematic
ones.

1. Ubuntu and Debian- (Ubuntu is what I use on regular basis).

At the sourceforge.net dowloads site for KMFL, the current 0.9.6
tarballs fail to get compiled in my Ubuntu-Gutsy and also in previous
Feisty and Edgy. (Can send tracebacks if you need).Ubuntu's own repos
have binaries for 0.9.4 but deb for scim-kmfl-imengine is not there in
their repos - it was so for previous Feisty also.

But I could install with the 0.9.5 debs you have given for Dapper into
my Gutsy, Feisty and Edgy. I downloaded that from
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/kmfl/kmfl-0.9.5-dapper.tar.gz and
after unpacking used "dpkg" command to install all 4 debs inside that
package. And my keymaps work fine. Checked out in Gnome, KDE and xFce
desktops

Debian-Etch - I used the above same solution as for Ubuntu using your
binaries made for Dapper and it works.

Question: How do we make debs for Ubuntu and Debian with latest
release 0.9.6? Or will you provide them?

Mandriva 2008 - Excellent in this. Their repos have the RPM bianries
for kmflcomp, libkmfl and scim-kmfl for latest 0.9.6 - Works fine. (I
have tested only on gnome yet).

SuSe10.3 - Not in their repo. And compilation from tar-balls of 0.9.6
fails. However I could install the 0.9.6 RPM binaries of Mandriva 2008
in SuSe10.3 and it works fine (Tested only gnome)

Fedora 8 - Compiling from tarballs fail. 0.9.6 RPM binaries of
Mandriva 2008 and older RPM  binaries of older SuSe also fail to get
installed.

So your support is most needed  for Fedora and also with all other
distros on how to get the latest release installed.

One more general question. Does KMFL work only as backend to SCIM or
are there other ways of using like as backend to uim or on ots own?

Thanks

Sethu