<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Introduction</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Bangla in GNU/Linux HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Bangla in GNU/Linux HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Users' Guide" HREF="usersguide.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="sect1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Bangla in GNU/Linux HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="usersguide.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect1" ><H1 CLASS="sect1" ><A NAME="intro" ></A >1. Introduction</H1 ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="preface" ></A >1.1. Preface</H2 ><P > One of the foremost things on many GNU/Linuxers' wishlist is better support for their vernacular script on their favourite operating system. But Indic scripts are some of the most difficult in the world to add support for, because of inherent complexities like the existence of conjuncts (yuktakshars) and non-standard spellings. However, the Free/Libre/Open Source community is not one that is easily daunted, and this document tries to outline the process of setting up Bangla support in <SPAN CLASS="acronym" >FLOSS</SPAN > applications. Moreover, it also aims to be the "developers' guide" for new developers in the Bangla in GNU/Linux project. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="copyright" ></A >1.2. Copyright Information</H2 ><A NAME="AEN71" ></A ><BLOCKQUOTE CLASS="BLOCKQUOTE" ><P > Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Taneem Ahmed, Santanu Chatterjee, Progga, Sayamindu Dasgupta. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections , with no Front-Cover Texts , and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is located at <A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html" TARGET="_top" > http://www.gnu.org/licences/fdl.html </A >.</P ></BLOCKQUOTE ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="disclaimer" ></A >1.3. Disclaimer</H2 ><P > All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. </P ><P > Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements. </P ><P > You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major installation and backups at regular intervals. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="newversions" ></A >1.4. New Versions</H2 ><P > The latest version of this HOWTO will always be made available at the <A HREF="http://www.bengalinux.org" TARGET="_top" >www.Bengalinux.org</A > site in a variety of formats. </P ><P > <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P > <A HREF="http://www.bengalinux.org/howto/Bangla-HOWTO.html" TARGET="_top" ><SPAN CLASS="acronym" >HTML</SPAN > </A >. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > <A HREF="http://www.bengalinux.org/howto/Bangla-HOWTO.txt" TARGET="_top" >Plain text</A >. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > <A HREF="http://www.bengalinux.org/howto/Bangla-HOWTO.pdf" TARGET="_top" ><SPAN CLASS="acronym" >PDF</SPAN ></A >. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > <A HREF="http://www.bengalinux.org/howto/Bangla-HOWTO.xml" TARGET="_top" ><SPAN CLASS="acronym" >XML</SPAN ></A >. </P ></LI ></UL > </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="credits" ></A >1.5. Credits</H2 ><P > We are extremely grateful to all the developers/users involved in the Bangla in GNU/Linux project, especially the people at <A HREF="http://www.AnkurBangla.Org" TARGET="_top" >Ankur </A > and at <A HREF="http://www.nongnu.org/freebangfont" TARGET="_top" >the Free Bangla Fonts project </A >. </P ><P > The <SPAN CLASS="acronym" >XML</SPAN >-stuff has been done with the help of the template written by Stein Gjoen, Gregory Leblanc and Greg Ferguson. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="feedback" ></A >1.6. Feedback</H2 ><P > If you have any comments, criticisms, ideas, additions, corrections, questions then please do mail them to <TT CLASS="email" ><<A HREF="mailto:users@bengalinux.org" >users@bengalinux.org</A >></TT > mailing list. We would be happy to help you. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="conventions" ></A >1.7. Conventions used in this document</H2 ><P >We have used a number of special formatting to indicate warning messages, commands, filenames, computer outputs etc. They are listed below. </P ><P > <P ></P ><DIV CLASS="variablelist" ><DL ><DT >Shell commands</DT ><DD ><P ><B CLASS="command" > bash$ ls </B ></P ></DD ><DT >Notes</DT ><DD ><P ><DIV CLASS="note" ><P ></P ><TABLE CLASS="note" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="25" ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" ><IMG SRC="../images/note.gif" HSPACE="5" ALT="Note"></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><P >NOTE</P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></P ></DD ><DT >Cautions</DT ><DD ><P ><DIV CLASS="caution" ><P ></P ><TABLE CLASS="caution" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="25" ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" ><IMG SRC="../images/caution.gif" HSPACE="5" ALT="Caution"></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><P >CAUTION</P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></P ></DD ><DT >Information</DT ><DD ><P ><DIV CLASS="tip" ><P ></P ><TABLE CLASS="tip" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="25" ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" ><IMG SRC="../images/tip.gif" HSPACE="5" ALT="Tip"></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><P >INFO</P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></P ></DD ><DT >Warnings</DT ><DD ><P ><DIV CLASS="warning" ><P ></P ><TABLE CLASS="warning" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="25" ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" ><IMG SRC="../images/warning.gif" HSPACE="5" ALT="Warning"></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><P >WARNING</P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></P ></DD ><DT >Filename/Directory</DT ><DD ><P ><TT CLASS="filename" >/usr/src/linux/</TT ></P ></DD ><DT >Applications</DT ><DD ><P ><SPAN CLASS="application" >application</SPAN ></P ></DD ><DT >Computer Output</DT ><DD ><P ><TT CLASS="computeroutput" >no such file or directory</TT ></P ></DD ><DT >Codes/scripts</DT ><DD ><P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><FONT COLOR="#000000" ><PRE CLASS="programlisting" >#!/bin/bash</PRE ></FONT ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></P ></DD ><DT >Large Computer Outputs</DT ><DD ><P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><FONT COLOR="#000000" ><PRE CLASS="screen" >logfile begins</PRE ></FONT ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></P ></DD ></DL ></DIV > </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect2" ><H2 CLASS="sect2" ><A NAME="purpose" ></A >1.8. Purpose of this HOWTO</H2 ><P > This document explains how to setup and develop support for Bangla (or Bengali) in a GNU/Linux systems. Bangla support in GNU/Linux is by no means complete, but, in modern GNU/Linux distributions, you may be able to write in Bangla, send emails in Bangla, chat in Bangla, save with Bangla filenames (<SPAN CLASS="acronym" >UTF-8</SPAN >....), have some of your graphical applications localized in Bangla, etc. Moreover, we have targeted to have the <SPAN CLASS="acronym" >GNOME</SPAN > core translated into Bangla by August 2003, so that it can be included in the 2.4 release of GNOME. (Update- GNOME 2.4 is now out with partial support for Bangla) </P ><P > <DIV CLASS="note" ><P ></P ><TABLE CLASS="note" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="25" ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" ><IMG SRC="../images/note.gif" HSPACE="5" ALT="Note"></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><P > However, note that this documents deals with Bangla support in GNU/Linux in <SPAN CLASS="acronym" >GUI</SPAN > based applications only - we have no immediate plans for supporting Bangla on the console. </P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV > </P ><P > <DIV CLASS="note" ><P ></P ><TABLE CLASS="note" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="25" ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" ><IMG SRC="../images/note.gif" HSPACE="5" ALT="Note"></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><P > Also note that the Bangla support that we speak of here is totally Unicode compliant. We do not support any kind of proprietary/non-standard encoding. </P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV > </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="usersguide.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Bangla in GNU/Linux HOWTO</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Users' Guide</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >