Re: [sinhala-technical] An enquiry about Sinhala on Linux

[Harshula <har...@gm...>]

Hi Sarath,

It's great to hear from you! My comments are below.

On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 13:30 -0700, Sarath Jayewardena wrote:

> Anyway, in the mid nineties I had a great interest in using Sinhala on 
> computers. I had devised a transliteration scheme called 'sumihiri' to 
> write Sinhala using English letters, which I used with TeX system to 
> actually typeset documents in Sinhala. I had created my own TeX fonts for 
> this. After I left Sri Lanka, I was busy with other things and had no time 
> to do or even follow up the developments that were taking place in this 
> area - until about six months ago, when I set out to create a web site of 
> Sinhala songs. I dug out my Sinhala typesetting utilities to do this. (The 
> result is the web site www.LankaSongBook.com which was launched in July 
> 08.)

I've been trying to document the various transliteration schemes on
http://www.nongnu.org/sinhala/. I found documentation on Sumihiri's
transliteration of vowels but nothing on the consonants. Do you have a
document on the entire transliteration scheme? I would really appreciate
it if you could send it to me.

I noted that your song book site uses images instead of Unicode Sinhala.
Do you plan to convert it to Unicode Sinhala?

> Right now, I am trying to *use* what you have made availble - and I am 
> having some difficulties. My first goal is to install Sinhala support in 
> Ubuntu 8.04 and use an input scheme like 'sayura' to enter text. I have 
> added the repository as per your instructions and installed 
> sinhala-gnu-linux package. Web browsing is fine. Then I ran the 
> gnome-keyboard-properties and set up the layout switching. (Instructions 
> did not apply directly, but were close enough.) So now I can open gedit, 
> press Shift+Shift and start typing Sinhala letters! That's wonderful, but 
> I don't know which Sinhala layout is being used. I don't know how to use 
> the modifiers except pressing 'r' seems to add an 'al kiriime' to a 
> letter. 

>From your description, it sounds like you used the XKB Sinhala keyboard
layout, which is described in:
http://www.nongnu.org/sinhala/doc/keymaps/sinhala-keyboard_3.html

Unfortunately, GNU/Linux has a few different input infrastructures which
makes it confusing. The very basic one is XKB and works with just about
every graphical toolkit, however, in general, only use this when the
other options fail.

The other options are the m17n and scim input infrastructures.

> Both scim-sayura and scim-wijesekara are installed. But how can I 
> choose, say, sayura method? Opening "System->Preference->SCIM input method 
> setup" opens a GUI for SCIM where under IMEngine 'Wijesekara' is 
> available. But when I select that entry, nothing is availbale for 
> configuration. I wonder if you could point me to some document that 
> clearly describes how to do these things. In general, I find the 
> documentation inadequate. I am not complaing, I know the limitations you 
> have, but it is hard to expect people to try this out without clear 
> documentation.

http://sinhala.sourceforge.net/
---------------------------------------------------------------
To test SCIM, press Control-space whilst you are running a GNOME
application. Then select one of the Sinhala input methods.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Did you try pressing Control-space? An input method selection box should
appear on the bottom right-hand corner. Can you also show me the content
of /etc/environment?

I really need to update my HOWTO document. When I get a round to it,
would you be able to review it for me?

> PS: Could you please send me Anuradha's e-mail address as well?

I've added his email address to the CC list.

I've also CC'd the sinhala-technical list. Are you interested in
joining? Ruvan (UCSC) and Gihan (UoM) are also on it.

cya,
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