Re: [suse-kde] Running other language X11/KDE on top of English subsystem?]
Ouch - best leave it for public consumption. Thunderbird is not yet as mailing list aware as, say, Kmail ;-). /// P /// -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [suse-kde] Running other language X11/KDE on top of English Matt T. wrote:
Sorry, no solution (yet), but I had been thinking about exactly the same problem. It would be great if you could share your success-story, once it is running.
Same language or another? From a technical point of view Thai is both easy (72 characters which fit nicely in the upper part of a 256 character table) and somewhat of a challenge (spaces are, well, optional ;-).
To start with: I didn't see the Thai - kde language files on the kde servers to download. Where did you get it?
You need to go to the international pages of KDE, http://i18n.kde.org/teams/index.php?a=i&t=th. Having said that, there appears to be GNOME support too. It really depends on which support is the most advanced as to what we'll use (I'm starting to do some testing hopefully next week). I might have a word with Novell to see where Ximian stands in this (and maybe they know another source of second hand PCs - I'm 5 short despite quite reasonable marketing potential ;-(. And Thai OpenOffice has a number of sources. They don't appear to be up to 1.1.2 yet but 1.0 and a derivative called (I think) Pladao Office both are native Thai. I've been having some difficulty locating resources that are bilingual, though, but I haven't dug in depth yet so I may have missed it. The ideal situation would be if I could use a dual language setup. If all fails I'll have to build two separate boot options, at least it's not that hard with Linux ;-)
I'm about to help a small charity with getting some machines online for kids to look at web pages in their native country (Thailand), and it'll be SuSE Linux based (Pro 9.1, nothing but the best ;-). I have mainly one question:
For remote admin purposes I want to run the base OS (i.e. anything done from teh command line) in English because that is easier to manage for me and for others that might want to help out, but I need the X11 platform (i.e what the end user sees) to be in Thai. Keyboards aren't a problem because a Thai keyboard is dual US+Thai layout, but will I be able to indeed run the whole GUI side of things in Thai (including OpenOffice) or am I facing an uphill battle?
Regards, /// Peter ///
On Saturday 14 August 2004 09:41, Peter wrote:
Ouch - best leave it for public consumption. Thunderbird is not yet as mailing list aware as, say, Kmail ;-).
/// P ///
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [suse-kde] Running other language X11/KDE on top of English
Matt T. wrote:
Sorry, no solution (yet), but I had been thinking about exactly the same problem. It would be great if you could share your success-story, once it is running.
Same language or another? From a technical point of view Thai is both easy (72 characters which fit nicely in the upper part of a 256 character table) and somewhat of a challenge (spaces are, well, optional ;-).
same language - Thai. And the challenge are not just the spaces, but also the position of the letters and the tonal particles - you can have a vocal above or below a letter, and then another particle above it ... Well, I think the best is to use Unicode, this way *all* languages can co-exist. SuSE defaults now to utf8, which I think is fine. KDE (or Qt) had a problem with positioning the cursor correctly in Thai, but the latest one or 2 versions do position correctly again. There is however on my system still a problem with correct display in some font-sizes, from 25 to 36. OO does *not* have this problem.
To start with: I didn't see the Thai - kde language files on the kde servers to download. Where did you get it?
You need to go to the international pages of KDE, http://i18n.kde.org/teams/index.php?a=i&t=th.
That's it, I just looked at the downloadable rpms available for SuSE...
Having said that, there appears to be GNOME support too. It really depends on which support is the most advanced as to what we'll use (I'm starting to do some testing hopefully next week).
I've seen PC for sale displaying kde in Thai, and others displaying gnome in Thai. I can't say which one was which version though, I haven't looked closer. Anyway, since I started to program again, now under Linux, I did choose KDE, it is just so much easier to write "nice" KDE programs than writing them for Gnome. So I will not go for Gnome, my time is too limited for 2 desktops.
I might have a word with Novell to see where Ximian stands in this (and maybe they know another source of second hand PCs - I'm 5 short despite quite reasonable marketing potential ;-(.
And Thai OpenOffice has a number of sources. They don't appear to be up to 1.1.2 yet but 1.0 and a derivative called (I think) Pladao Office both are native Thai.
Pladao is available as version 2, which is however not based on the very latest OO code, but some versions before., and yes, it is all in Thai. There are books quite cheap available in Thai, including a CD with the latest Pladao, which should be very helpful to get someone going. If you do not speak / read Thai, you might have some problems explaining things ;-) to the kids, so a thai manual might be not bad to have.
I've been having some difficulty locating resources that are bilingual, though, but I haven't dug in depth yet so I may have missed it. The ideal situation would be if I could use a dual language setup.
Switching from one language to another should work for kde apps by selecting a different language in control center, plus a session restart - re-login. The language files need to be installed, of course. Overall, if you have a Thai translation file for a recent KDE version, I would try that frist. It would give you a Thai desktop, with possibly konqueror, kmail and koffice in Thai. And on top of that you could run pladao etc. And you could easily log in as another user with kde in English to do your admin stuff. And then, if you can add kiosk to the Thai KDE, you could even have less surprises when the kids start to "tweak" it - just imagine you have to look on the Thai desktop fro a setting which a clever kid has changed ;-) Now, I cannot implement it myself for some time, too many urgent things are coming first, but I think that it would work that way. Regards, Matt
If all fails I'll have to build two separate boot options, at least it's not that hard with Linux ;-)
I'm about to help a small charity with getting some machines online for kids to look at web pages in their native country (Thailand), and it'll be SuSE Linux based (Pro 9.1, nothing but the best ;-). I have mainly one question:
For remote admin purposes I want to run the base OS (i.e. anything done from teh command line) in English because that is easier to manage for me and for others that might want to help out, but I need the X11 platform (i.e what the end user sees) to be in Thai. Keyboards aren't a problem because a Thai keyboard is dual US+Thai layout, but will I be able to indeed run the whole GUI side of things in Thai (including OpenOffice) or am I facing an uphill battle?
Regards, /// Peter ///
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Matt T. -
Peter