technology is impermanent

[maybay]

A monk has been using Monlam for ages. Now his computer is dying of viruses and he must upgrade, but his hardware can't take Windows 7, nor can he afford it.
So I installed Ubuntu. Its got Tibetan keyboard support and unicode fonts builtin.
Problem is he's used to Monlam keyboard layout and doesn't want to change. He also has all his documents in these non-unicode fonts. What to do?

[tantular]

The TCRC keyboard layout (same as Monlam 1) should be available in the Ubuntu Tibetan package. If it isn't, try this.

Try converting legacy files with these conversion programs. Officially they don't support monlam, but play around with the encodings. TCRC bodyig might work. If it doesn't, manually re-typing may be the only option.

[maybay]

Thanks, that did it.
There´s a problem with this method though. The script copies the entire evdev.xml file that was on the guy´s system at the time and its messed up my other layouts. It should be incremental. If I figure out only what needs to be copied over I´ll post here.
Cheers

[maybay]

I found 4 sets of lst/xml: base, evdev, xfree86, xorg. You need to change the first two.

In the /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/ directory add this line to the list of variants in ¨base.lst¨ and ¨evdev.lst¨

Code: Select all

tib_tcrc        cn: Tibetan TCRC Bodyig

Then add this section of xml inside the <variantList> in ¨base.xml¨ and ¨evdev.xml¨

Code: Select all

        <variant>
          <configItem>
            <name>tib_tcrc</name>
            <description>Tibetan TCRC Bodyig</description>
            <languageList>
              <iso639Id>tib</iso639Id>
            </languageList>
          </configItem>
        </variant>

This set up the system to recognize the layout. Now you need to add the symbols for the layout.
Instead of adding our own symbol file we´ll add to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/cn where the other Tibetan symbols are kept.

Code: Select all

// $XKeyboardConfig$
//
// TCRC Bodyig / Tibetan layout for TCRC keyboard
//
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

//   Copyright (C) 2009, tcrc <tcrc@gov.tibet.net>
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//   Version 0.2  2009-01-09  Layout map provided by TCRC
// 
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "tib_tcrc" {

      name[Group1]= "Tibetan (TCRC)";

      key <TLDE> { [      0x1000F09, 0x1000F38, 0x1000F6C, 0x1000F6D ]   };
     
// numbers e.a.
      key <AE01> { [      0x1000F21, 0x1000F27, 1, exclam ]   };
      key <AE02> { [      0x1000F22, 0x1000F05, 2, at     ]   };
      key <AE03> { [      0x1000F23, 0x1000F06, 3, numbersign ]   };
      key <AE04> { [      0x1000F24, 0x1000F48, 4, dollar  ]   };
      key <AE05> { [      0x1000F25, 0x1000F70, 5, percent ]   };
      key <AE06> { [      0x1000F26, 0x1000F08, 6, 0x1000F01 ]   };
      key <AE07> { [      0x1000F27, 0x1000F38, 7, ampersand ]   };
      key <AE08> { [      0x1000F28, 0x1000F34, 8, asterisk ]   };
      key <AE09> { [      0x1000F29, 0x1000F3C, 9, parenleft ]   };
      key <AE10> { [      0x1000F20, 0x1000F3D, 0, parenright ]   };
      key <AE11> { [      0x1000F14, 0x1000F7F, minus, underscore ]   };
      key <AE12> { [      0x1000F0D, 0x1000F11, equal, plus ]   };

//****************************** TCRC Bodyig Starts
     
   // talu ta, wa, dengpo, ra

      key <AD01> { [      0x1000f4a, 0x1000f4b, 0x1000F88, VoidSymbol  ]   };
      key <AD02> { [      0x1000f5d, 0x1000fad, 0x1000F89, VoidSymbol  ]   };
      key <AD03> { [      0x1000f7a, 0x1000f7b, 0x1000F6E, 0x1000F6F]    };
      key <AD04> { [      0x1000f62, ISO_Level3_shift, 0x1000FB2, 0x1000F82  ]   };


   //ta ya shabchu gigu
      key <AD05> { [      0x1000f4f, 0x1000f50, 0x1000F9F, VoidSymbol  ]   };
      key <AD06> { [      0x1000f61, 0x1000F84, 0x1000FB1, VoidSymbol  ]   };
      key <AD07> { [      0x1000f74, 0x1000F75, 0x1000F1C, VoidSymbol ]   };
      key <AD08> { [      0x1000F72, 0x1000F73, 0x1000F1D, 0x1000F17  ]   };

   //naro, pa, (not assigned), below pa

      key <AD09> { [      0x1000F7C, 0x1000F7D, 0x1000F1E, 0x1000F18   ]   };
      key <AD10> { [      0x1000F54, 0x1000F55, 0x1000FA4, 0x1000F19   ]   };
      key <AD11> { [      0x1000F47, 0x1000F97, bracketleft, 0x1000F3E ]   };
      key <AD12> { [      0x1000FA4, 0x1000F99, bracketright, 0x1000F3F  ]   };

   //

      key <AC01> { [      ISO_Level3_Latch, 0x1000F68 , 0x1000F4A, 0x1000F9A ]   };
      key <AC02> { [      0x1000F66, 0x1000F64, 0x1000FB6, 0x1000F9B ]   };
      key <AC03> { [      0x1000F51, 0x1000F5B, 0x1000FA1, 0x1000FAB ]   };
      key <AC04> { [      0x1000F44, 0x1000FA2, 0x1000F94, 0x1000F9E ]   };
      key <AC05> { [      0x1000F42, 0x1000F43, 0x1000F92, guillemotleft ]   };
      key <AC06> { [      0x1000F67, 0x1000FB7, 0x1000FB7, guillemotright ]   };
      key <AC07> { [      0x1000F47, 0x1000FAC, 0x1000F97, 0x1000F35 ]   };
      key <AC08> { [      0x1000F40, 0x1000F41, 0x1000F90, VoidSymbol ]   };
      key <AC09> { [      0x1000F63, 0x1000FA9, 0x1000FB3, VoidSymbol ]   };
      key <AC10> { [      0x1000F4D, 0x1000F7F, 0x1000F4D, semicolon ]   };
      key <AC11> { [      0x1000F60, 0x1000F71, apostrophe, quotedbl ]   };

//

      key <AB01> { [      0x1000F5F, 0x1000F5E, 0x1000F13, 0x1000F36 ]   };
      key <AB02> { [      0x1000F59, 0x1000F5A, 0x1000FA9, 0x1000FBF ]   };
      key <AB03> { [      0x1000F45, 0x1000F46, 0x1000F95, 0x1000FB0 ]   };
      key <AB04> { [      0x1000F4C, 0x1000F4E, 0x1000F9C, 0x1000FBB ]   };
      key <AB05> { [      0x1000F56, 0x1000F57, 0x1000FA6, 0x1000FBC ]   };
      key <AB06> { [      0x1000F53, 0x1000F49, 0x1000FA3, 0x1000F99 ]   };
      key <AB07> { [      0x1000F58, 0x1000F65, 0x1000FA8, 0x1000FB5 ]   };
      key <AB08> { [      0x1000FB1, 0x1000FB3, comma, less ]   };
      key <AB09> { [      0x1000FB2, 0x1000F62, period, greater ]   };
      key <AB10> { [      0x1000F0D, 0x1000F66, slash, question ]   };

// TODO: BKSL and LSGT are from gb layout, are there any variants?
      key <BKSL> { [      0x1000F14, 0x1000F08, backslash, 0x1000FBA ]   };
      key <LSGT> { [      0x1000F0D, 0x1000F11, 0x1000F10, 0x1000F0F ]   };

      key <SPCE> { [ 0x1000F0B, space, 0x1000F0C, nobreakspace ] };

    include "level3(ralt_switch)"
   
};

The keyboard layout is configured. Logout and back in. This worked for me on 11.10.

Now you can use the fonts that come with Ubuntu or copy across the fonts as in the rest of the script.
If you mess up just remove the /usr/share/X11/xkb/ directory; go to Synaptic and reinstall the xkb-data package.