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>6. Keyboard Drivers</H1
><P
>Once again, lack of standards shows up here. There are
quite a few Tamil keyboard layouts, the traditional typewriter
keyboard; then with the surge of internet arrived the romanized
transliteration keyboards; later the TAmil-Nadu government played
its part by prescribing a tamilnet99 keyboard. These are only a
few to talk about; we have a few others which do not fall into any
of these <SPAN
CLASS="QUOTE"
>"standards."</SPAN
></P
><P
>There are two Tamil keyboard drivers for the X Window System,
both of them set to tamilnet99 standards (see
<A
HREF="http://www.tamilnet99.org"
TARGET="_top"
>tamilnet99 website</A
>
for the details on the keymap). You will be able to download
both the keydrivers from the
<A
HREF="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilinix/files"
TARGET="_top"
> Yahoo! tamilinix group files section
</A
>.</P
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><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="AEN282"
></A
>6.1. tamil_kmap</H2
><P
>The first driver is <EM
>tamil_kmap</EM
>,
created by Vasee. It is based on the original version of
Siva. It is operable under both TSCII 1.6 and TAB encodings.
The detailed installation instructions are given in the
<TT
CLASS="filename"
>README</TT
> file in the package. It is very
simple to install. First, untar the package into a temporary directory.
Then type:</P
><P
> <B
CLASS="command"
>cp ta /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/</B
>
</P
><P
> then: <B
CLASS="command"
>cp Compose /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1</B
>
</P
><P
>and put the shell script <TT
CLASS="filename"
>setkb</TT
>
into a directory on your system <TT
CLASS="envar"
>PATH</TT
> .
You may need to become <B
CLASS="command"
>root</B
>
to copy these files into these directories.</P
><P
>To use the Tamil keyboard, type
<B
CLASS="command"
>setkb tscii</B
> or <B
CLASS="command"
>setkb tab</B
>.
From inside the keyboard driver you will be able to switch
between the two standards, and also between Roman and Tamil
fonts.</P
></DIV
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><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="AEN298"
></A
>6.2. tamilvp</H2
><P
>The other keyboard driver, <EM
>tamilvp</EM
>
(vp for Visaip Palakai) is written and maintained by
Dinesh. As indicated above, you may download that from the
<I
CLASS="citetitle"
>Yahoo! tamilinix group</I
> file section.
It is available as rpm (I have not tried it out yet). Just install
the rpm and files will be in appropriate locations. To run the
program type <B
CLASS="command"
>tamilvp</B
> and you will get the GUI
cell to choose between Tamil (TSCII 1.6 or TAB) and English.</P
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