Linux And Free Software Tips, Tricks And Tutorials, fun with Free Software Options

[hildebrand]

I am starting this thread with a long term perspective to put together lots of useful information for our programs.
Request all to participate in this thread to spread the word about all the lovely things that can be done on Linux.

The distribution I use is Debian (from www.debian.org) but most tricks shall be generic in nature (program based). Many of the softwares are available on windows also so some tips maybe applicable for their windows versions also.

This post has been edited by hildebrand: Oct 10 2009, 07:19 PM

[hildebrand]

Tip #13: How to type in Hindi in Open Office and other softwares?

I normally use KDE. will mention the procedure for that incase
someone's interested:-
1. Open Control Center. Go to Regional & Accessibility->Keyboard Layout.
2. Click on Enable Keyboards radio button.
3. Select India on left panel (Available layouts) and click on add.
This will cause a new India layout to come in active layouts on the
right.
4. In the layout variants you can choose 'deva' (if you want standard
hindi keyboard) or 'bolnagri' (if you want phonetic hindi keyboard,
which I prefer since its easy).

Once this is done the KDE Keyboard Layout tool shall be available in
your system tray. Whenever you need to type in Hindi select the
appropriate hindi layout. Once thats done you can type in Hindi in all
softwares supporting hindi unicode including Open Office. If you want
hindi fonts ttf-devanagri package should be installed.

Its possible to do similarly in GNOME also where you have a switcher
applet which you can add to your desktop.
Add -> Utility -> Keyboard layout switcher (for Gnome <2.6). For newer
gnome use 'keyboard indicator'.

Please note that instead of hindi layout you could have gone for other layouts like tamil, telugu, punjabi, oriya, bengali etc also to type in those languages.