മലയാളം/സഹായം

GNU/Linux

Fonts

These are the available Unicode Fonts.

There is an incompatibility between Anjali and Rachana when rendering "Chillu" (consonants without vowel sounds). Hopefully it is fixed as Unicode accepted separate code positions for "chillu".

To setup the fonts just copy it to ~/.fonts directory or open nautilus file manager and go to location (press CTRL+L and type location) fonts:/// and drag-n-drop font files to this location. If you want it to be available to all users copy it to /usr/share/fonts. You can check whether the fonts are installed correctly by running the command fc-list (eg. fc-list |grep Rachana ). Restart the running applications so that the new fonts are available to them. All aplications which depend on font config will be able to use the newly installed fonts.

Rendering

KDE/QT offers best rendering support and GNOME/Pango rendering support is still not perfect. So you can use KDE tools for working with Malayalam (konqueror for browsing, kedit for text editing, koffice for office and kbabel for po file (gettext message bundle) editing.

Input Methods

Inscript keyboard layout - Even though it might look a bit difficult to start it is the fastest input method. You can select malayalam keyboard layout from "keyboard" menu in GNOME Preferences section (in my Debain GNU/Linux etch it is Panel->Desktop->Preferences->Keyboard) or (...fill in for KDE here ...) in KDE

Inscript Malayam Keyboard layout (I would suggest you take a printout of this picture, you won't need it for more than two days maximum though :) )

SCIM - you can type in manglish (some one using SCIM please give a good description)

Microsoft Windows

See help page of Malayalam Wikipedia for help in setting up malayalam environment for Windows.