Localization/Indic - ArchWiki

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This page explains how setup your Arch installation in order to input Indic languages.

## All Indic

### Fonts

The following packages provide fonts for a variety of Indic scripts:

- ttf-freebanglafontAUR - Font for Bangla
- ttf-indic-otf - Indic OpenType Fonts collection (containing ttf-freebanglafont), provides the character U+0CA0 "ಠ"
- lohit-fontsAUR - Indic TrueType fonts from Fedora Project (containing Oriya Fonts and more)
- ttf-devanagarifontsAUR - Devanagari TrueType fonts (contains 283 fonts)
- ttf-gurmukhi-fonts_sikhnetAUR - TrueType Gurmukhi fonts (gurbaniwebthick,prabhki)
- ttf-gurmukhi_punjabiAUR - TTF Gurmukhi / Punjabi (contains 252 fonts)
- ttf-gujrati-fontsAUR - TTF Gujarati fonts (Avantika,Gopika,Shree768)
- ttf-kannada-fontAUR - Kannada, the language of Karnataka state in India
- ttf-lklugAUR - Sinhala Unicode font
- ttf-tamilAUR - Tamil Unicode fonts
- ttf-urdufontsAUR - Urdu fonts (Jameel Noori Nastaleeq (+kasheeda), Nafees Web Naskh, PDMS Saleem Quran Font) and font configuration to set Jameel Noori Nastaleeq as default font for Urdu
- ttf-malayalam-fonts-metaAUR - Meta package providing all Malayalam Unicode Fonts released by Swathanthra Malayalam Computing packaged from upstream releases.

Note: Some applications like Firefox and desktop environments will use ttf-font (ttf-dejavu, ttf-liberation, ttf-bitstream-vera, ttf-droid, gnu-free-fonts, noto-fonts, ttf-croscore, ttf-ibm-plex, etc.) by default. The gnu-free-font package does not have full support for Indic characters alignment. Thus, consider using noto-fonts over ttf-dejavu or gnu-free-fonts as a ttf-font source.

### Locale

Setting up the locale will ensure that applications use appropriate localizations when available. Setup your locale by following instructions here.

### Input methods

Since, keyboards with Indic layouts are extremely rare, you are likely to want to use transliteration. The following input method engines (IME) will help you accomplish this:

- Avro supports phonetic input for Bangla in IBus via ibus-avro-gitAUR.
- m17n project supports inscript layouts and transliteration schemes for Sanskrit, Assamese, Bengali, Burmese, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu & Tibetan amongst others. The following support input methods:
  - IBus via ibus-m17n
  - Fcitx via fcitx-m17n
- OpenBangla Keyboard supports Bangla phonetic (Avro phonetic), Probhat, Munir Optima layout for Bangla in IBus via openbangla-keyboardAUR.
- varnam project supports transliteration for Hindi and Malayalam in IBus via libvarnam-ibus-gitAUR.

See also Input method for a list of available input-method frameworks.

## Sinhalese

This section describes how to get Sinhalese Unicode support and Sinhalese Unicode input to work using IBus (sayura-ibus) or scim (sayura-scim).

### Fonts

For Sinhala support, you can install any of these fonts:

- noto-fonts - Noto Sans Sinhala, a sans serif font.
- gnu-free-fonts - FreeSerif, a serif font.
- ttf-lklugAUR - LKLUG, a serif font.

#### Guide to install Sinhala Unicode Font

Download http://sinhala.sourceforge.net/files/lklug.ttf and place it in `/usr/share/fonts`.

Then Run the following command

    fc-cache -fv

And proceed to the below steps..

### Locale

Edit /etc/locale.gen. Uncomment following line

    si_LK UTF-8

Run following program

    locale-gen

Immediately you will be able to read Sinhala Unicode in your programs (If not You may need to restart the relavent programs. eg: Firefox)

### Input methods

#### iBus

For Sinhala support on ibus install the following package

- ibus-m17n - M17N engine for IBus

Logout from the current session and log in again after installing. After that, Sinhala input methods should be available on input method configuration panel.

#### FCITX

The only packaged fcitx based input method for Sinhalese is fcitx-sayura for Fcitx.

While there are also ibus-sayura and scim-sayura, they are no longer in the AUR (albeit they can still be found in the AUR archive).

## See also

- sinhala linux - sinhala linux's Official Homepage
- sayura-scim - sayura-scim's Official Homepage
- LKLUG - Lanka Linux User Group (Sinhala Linux Mailing List)
- Sinhala Unicode Group (සිංහල යුනිකෝඩ් සමූහය)
- Enabling Unicode Sinhala in GNU/Linux HOWTO

Category:

- Localization