My iBook was recently stolen in a burglary, which has forced me to turn to my desktop, which runs the variety of GNU/Linux known as Ubuntu, to try to do some work. One of the minimum requirements for my work is the ability to write in Devanagari (the script used to write Hindi and some other north Indian languages) as well as in the Roman alphabet with the diacritics necessary for accurate transcription of Hindi, Sanskrit, and other Indic languages.
With a good deal of assistance, I’ve figured out how to do this, so I’m posting some notes on the process here for my own reference and to help anyone else who needs similar capability. These notes are intended to assist someone who computes primarily in an English medium but who requires the ability to write in Hindi as well.
It should be fairly simple to enable support for Devanagari in Ubuntu, but there seems to be a bug in Ubuntu 7.10 that might get in the way. You need to enable a program called SCIM, which provides support for complex language inputs. It’s not too difficult to install SCIM and correct the bug. Just follow these instructions. Once installed (you also need to make sure Hindi is selected in System -> Administration -> Language Support), there should be a little keyboard on the menu bar that lets you switch between various keyboards. One of the included keyboards is called “Hindi Phonetic.” This keyboard allows you to type Hindi on a QWERTY keyboard based on the way it sounds. If you’re familiar with native Hindi keyboards, there are other options as well.
(I’ve also added an additional repository to my APT sources list (http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu dapper main), which provides more recent builds of SCIM. I’m not sure if this step is necessary or helpful.)
I found it trickier to figure out an easy way to quickly input characters with diacritical marks. My current solution is to use T-RFC1345. This virtual keyboard provides mnemonic input strings for various characters not present on a standard US keyboard. A very extensive guide to these character mnemonics is available here.
To install this keyboard, launch Synaptic (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager), and install the package scim-m17n along with its dependencies. This will install a set of multilingual keyboards, including one called t-rfc1345, which is what we’re interested in right now.
When this keyboard is selected, it mostly functions like a normal US keyboard except that easily remembered strings that begin with ampersand (&) can be used to enter characters not on the keyboard. For instance, if you type “&a-” with this keyboard selected, it will produce an a with a macron overhead (ā). Or, if you type “&d-.”, you’ll get a d with a dot underneath (ḍ). It takes some getting used to, but it’s ultimately a fast and simple way to input a huge variety of diacritical and accent marks (of course, you need to use a font that supports the necessary characters). Check out the guide to RFC1345 to see the full range of available characters.
I hope someone finds this helpful. I’m trying to recreate a set of steps that I discovered largely through trial and error, so if you need clarification or have a correction to make, please let me know in the comments.
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