With X window system, we can use X client, the xmodmap to input Thai characters to other applications.To output Thai characters, it depends on applications you are running, and you must have Thai fonts to display on screen.
First of all you should obtain Thai fonts, available freely at many ftp sites. Here there are,
See http://www.fedu.uec.ac.jp/ZzzThai/unix/nets-mail/nets-mail-s1.html for examples step by step.
Extract font if it came in form font_x.tar.Choose the directory that the new fonts should be. You can choose any directory or new directory as you want. If you use Linux, installing fonts in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/ is not a bad choice. In that directory, run these command, mkfontdir, xset fp+ new_font_path.Check new fonts by using "xlsfonts | grep thai" command. If you can not find Thai fonts, you may have to log out and log in again.
The part that often occur error is "xset fp+ new_font_path" . If you get strange errors with xset when you extend the X server's font path with the fp+ command-line parameter, the error message may not be descriptive of the real problem. If you're sure you've done everything right, then check the file permissions on the directory you're trying to add to the X server's font path. In order for xset to work, it requires write access to this directory. In many systems, the font directories allow only write access for root user. The xset error message, though, doesn't give you a clue if this is the problem.
To run the xset command with fp+ option to add the new font directory to your font path. There is another thing you need to be careful about this that you use the font path as it would be known to your local server. For example, your home directory /home/your_login_name on the machine machine_B were NFS-mounted to your work station machine_A under the name /machine_B/home/your_login_name, then you need to specify /machine_B/home/your_login_name/new_font_path in your font path. Otherwise, if you use the wrong font path, the local server can't find the directory locally and gives you the error,
machine_B%xset fp+ /home/your_login_name/new_font_path X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation) Major opcode of failed request: 51 (X_SetFontPath) Value in failed request: 0x5 Serial number of failed request: 4 Current serial number in output stream: 6
If you look from machine_A you will find that /home/your_login_name doesn't exist.
machine_A%ls -d /home/your_login_name /home/your_login_name not found machine_A%ls -d /machine_B/home/your_login_name /machine_B/home/your_login_name
This is the NFS-mounted problem. If you succeeded installing new fonts try "xset -q" see font path, you will see the new font directory.
If you fail to set new fontpath, try
%xset fp+ tcp/130.153.137.1:7000
This will add the new font path from our font server.
Total solution: ask your administrator to install new fonts.
Now, at least you can view Thai characters on your xterm with option "-fn thai_font".
You can also view Thai documents by using netscape navigator. Don't forget to select Thai font.
There are many fonts for you to choose. From our ftp sites you can get these fonts. Some fonts has a trouble with displaying. For example, etl fonts display font worst than thai8x16 in xedit. The position of "wannayuk,sara" are not correct. You can use program xfd to see different between these fonts.
%xfd -fn thai8x16 & %xfd -fn -etl-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-m-70-tis620.2529-1 &
You will see the difference.
There are 44 fonts from ftp://ftp.fedu.uec.ac.jp/pub/thai/UEC/ZzzThai/Software/UNIX/Fonts/nets-fonts.tar In nets-fonts.tar, there are dbttbdfx.tar and fix_fonts.tar. You must extract them too.
See the list of font.
These are some X programs that you can use to decide the fonts.
X programs for working with fonts
Program Use bdftopcf Converts bitmap font file to binary X server font file fs Font server; can scale fonts for X server fsinfo Prints information on font server fslsfonts Lists font server fonts xfd Displays characters in a font fstobdf Converts a font server scaled font to a bitmap font file xfontsel Allow you to choose a font graphically mkfontdir Set up a font directory xlsfonts Lists available font names xfed Font editor, not part of standard X distribution xset X setting utility, xset fp+ font_path to set font path
The xmodmap program is used to edit and display the keyboard modifier map and keymap table that are used by client applications to convert event keycodes into keysyms. It is usually run from the user's session startup script to configure the keyboard according to personal tastes.
Example:
%xmodmap -e "keysym CapsLock ="
The position of Control key in workstation and PC-UNIX are different. If you use PC-UNIX and workstation, I think you have hit the wrong key accidentally. To solve this problem, above example will disable Caps Lock entirely. This example shows how to edit key with command line. Actually, you may provide the file that contains configuration, then run "xmodmap config_file".
Step 1:
Download xmodmap's configuration file to your home directory. This file shold work with any QWERTY English keyboard layout.
Download file Xmodmap
Step2:
Rename downloaded configuretion file to .xmodmaprc or .Xmodmap
%mv config_file .xmodmaprc
Step 3:
Add the following line in your .xsession file (if you start X with xdm) or .xinitrc (if you start X with startx or xinit command).
xmodmap .xmodmaprc
This will load xmodmap's configuration automatically when you start X. If you want to try Thai input now, run the following command,
%xmodmap .xmodmaprc
Now, I will show you what can you do with Thai fonts and xmodmap.
Step 1:
Xedit is a editor program that comes with X window system. Actually it is not powerful as emacs, but xdit can display thai font while emacs can not. Run the following command,
%xedit -fn thai8x16 &
This tell xedit to use Thai font named thai8x16 for displaying. Make sure you already have Thai fonts in your system. You may replace thai8x16 by any Thai fonts you like, here I use font thai8x16 because xedit can display font's position well.
Step 2:
After you type some English, to switch to Thai mode, press on Mode_Switch key. You can change the Mode_Switch key as you want.
Step 3:
Type some Thai sentences, you will see something like this,
Step 4:
To switch to English mode, press Mode_Switch key again.
Step 5:
Save file as the name you like. You may call xedit to edit that file again, but remember you should add option "-fn thai_font". Thai document which created from xedit can view on Windows95 with wordpad, Likit and other editor. You may alias xedit to "xedit- fn thai_font" by using command alias, for example
%alias xedit "xedit -fn thai_font" ( in C-shell's case )
%alias xedit='xedit -fn thai_font' ( in bash shell's case)
You can also view that Thai documents with more, if you use xterm with option "-fn thai_font".
I rarely use xedit because emacs is more powerful. I try the same way to input Thai characters in emacs but it did not work. If you want to input Thai in emacs, I strongly recommend mule (MULti language Enhancement to GNU Emacs). We can edit documents in about 30 languages and display in one times. These are the language that you can use with mule. Amharic, Arabic, Danish(Dansk), English, Esperanto, Finnish(Suomi), Freanch, German(Deutsh Nord), German (Deutsh Sud), Greek, Hebrew, Italiano, Maltese, Nederlands(Vlaams), Norwegian(Norsk), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Tigrigna, Turkish, Vietnamese, Yoguslavian, Japanese, Chinese, Cantonese, Hangul and difference among Chinese characters inGB, JIS, KSC, BIG5. Really perfect if you are looking for multilingual editor! Xmodmap is not necessary at all. For more detail click http://www.fedu.uec.ac.jp/ZzzThai/unix/mule.
If mule supply you too much, you can try Xemacs. Xemacs is a better interface version for emacs. You can choose Thai font from menu bar. Warning, you still want xmodmap to input Thai characters. See http://www.xemacs.org/ for information on xemacs.
As I said you can input Thai characters with xmodmap in the same way as above example with xedit, if the applications can display Thai fonts and accept input from xmodmap. I tried the same way with xterm -fn thai_font but failed. You may this input method with xpaint,xemacs...( tell me if you know more :-) ) Some application may have to add option "-fn thai_font" to display Thai font on X. You may make the .Xdefaults or .Xresources file or set alias.
To send E-mail see http://www.fedu.uec.jp/ZzzThai/xio/xmailer.html
Our concept is to input 2 languages, Thai and English. Xmodmap is a good choice with this concept but it is easier to make a Thai keyboard layout with xkeycaps (see xkeycaps). If you look at the .xmodmaprc, you will see,
! For Sun keyboard keysym F1 = Mode_switch <-- choose F1 as Mode_switch key remove lock = Caps_Lock <-- remove Lock modifier from Caps Lock key add lock = Mode_switch <-- add Lock modifier to F1 add mod2 = Modeswitch <-- add mod2 (Thai input) to F1
.....
keysym bracketleft = 0x005b 0x007b 0272 0260 keysym bracketright = 0x005d 0x007d 0305 comma keysym a = a A 0277 0304 keysym s = s S 0313 0246 keysym d = d D 0241 0257
.....
For example, keysym a = a A 0277 0304 tells computer to know that, in English mode if we press the "A" key, the character a or A (Shift) will be on screen. In Thai mode, the character "Thai_fofan" or "Thai_ru" will be displayed on screen.
If you look at tis-code table above, you can know that 0277 (0xbf) is stand for "Thai_fofan" in octal code. You can change to hexadecimal code, 0xbf that is equivalent to 0277.
You can find grammar from man page for xmodmap or xkeycaps.
%man xmodmap
or
%man xkeycaps ( if you have xkeycaps in your system )
Xkeycaps is a graphical front-end xmodmap. Copyright (c) by Jamie Zawinski. You can get information about xkeycaps from http://home.netscape.com/people/jwz/xkeycaps/ I used xkeycaps to modify xmodmap's configuration file for Sun type4 (X Consortium R4/R5 layout) keyboard to PC 101 key keyboard #2 (Linux/XFree86 US layout) .
To edit the key, point to cursor to the key that you want to edit. Click on right button of your mouse, select edit key. The expression "keysym a = a A 0277 0304" can show graphically as
That means the key "A" is set to "a", "A", "questiondown" and "Adiaeresis" in Latin1 character set! That is, or xmodmap, the followings sentences are equal.
keysym A = a A 0277 0304 <-- mixed expression keysym A = 0x61 0x41 0xbf 0xc4 <-- hexadecimal expression keysym A = 0141 0101 0277 0304 <-- octal expression keysym A = a A questiondown Adiaeresis <-- text expression
Note that keycode for "A a key" is depend on keyboard type. This example is PC 101 key keyboard #2 (Linux/XFree86 US layout) , keycode for "A" is 0x26.
You can also write,
keycode 0x26 = 0x61 0x41 0xbf 0xc4
See man page for more information how to use this program.
From above section, you can see that we can express "Thai_fofan" as "questiondown" and express "Thia_ru" as "Adiaeresis". The following are Latin1 character set table and tis620 character set table that I modified from xfd.
You can see that from 0xa0, Thai characters code and Latin1 are in the same area. This Thai character code table is based on tis620. Therefore if you use xapplication that does not display Thai font and you input Thai characters, guess what will you see.
Because Thai font code use the same area with Latin1, this font code can be category to ISO8859 , Information Processing - 8 bit Single-byte Code Graphic Character Sets, character set. Most European character set are ISO8859. As you can see from the table we can display one character by typing one key, so Thai character set is on of ISO8859 series. When you choose fonts from netscape, you may notice that DbThaiText font is in the Latin1 group.
xkeycaps can display Thai characters while you are clicking on the key in Mode_Switch. You have to change the line
"*Label.font: *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*",
to
"*Label.font: -etl-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-m-70-tis620.2529-1",
You can get this font from ftp.fedu.uec.ac.jp/pub/thai/UEC/ZzzThai/Software/UNIX/Fonts/Mule/etl_fonts.tar this font can display with xkeycaps properly. Complie xkeycaps agian you will see the difference. When you se mouse click on Mode_switch then click any key, you will see Thai character in label (See picturs below). Use -fn option will not change font of this label. Now you can check your keymap easier.
If you view "keysymdef.h" under /usr/X11R6/include/X11/ you will see,
.....
#define XK_questiondown 0x0bf #define XK_Agrave 0x0c0 #define XK_Aacute 0x0c1 #define XK_Acircumflex 0x0c2 #define XK_Atilde 0x0c3 #define XK_Adiaeresis 0x0c4
.....
/* * Thai * Byte 3 = d */ #ifdef XK_THAI #define XK_Thai_kokai 0xda1 #define XK_Thai_khokhai 0xda2 .....
#define XK_Thai_fofan 0xdbf #define XK_Thai_phosamphao 0xdc0 #define XK_Thai_moma 0xdc1 #define XK_Thai_yoyak 0xdc2 #define XK_Thai_rorua 0xdc3 #define XK_Thai_ru 0xdc4 .....
Surprize, Thai characters were included in this file too. That means X11R6, keysym definition use one more byte to indicate specific keysym. Thai and Latin1 should not use the same code for keysym anymore. However we must create new font to support this. We must use program that accepts 2 bytes cahracter also.
Because X11R6 provide Keysym for Thai characters, we can modify xkeycaps' sources code to select Thai characters from popup menu. In command.c,add Thai after Hebrew. Change KEYBOARD_CHARSET_INDEX 13 to KEYBOARD_CHARSET_INDEX 14 and change VENDOR_CHARSET_INDEX 14 to VENDOR_CHARSET_INDEX 15.
static char *all_keyset_names [] = {
"Latin1",
"Latin2",
"Latin3",
"Latin4",
"Kana",
"Arabic",
"Cyrillic",
"Greek",
"Technical",
"Special",
"Publishing",
"APL",
"Hebrew",
"Thai", /* add this line */
"Keyboard",
#ifdef DO_VENDOR_KEYSYMS
"Vendor",
#endif
0
};
#define KEYBOARD_CHARSET_INDEX 14 /* changed from 13 */
#ifdef DO_VENDOR_KEYSYMS
#define VENDOR_CHARSET_INDEX 15 /* changed from 14 */
#endif
Complie sources code again you can select Thai characters from popup menu.
This will help you to make keymap but it is not useful. Because keysymdef.h defines Thai characters to be 2 bytes, therefore we have to use Thai font that Thai characters locate from 0xda1 to 0xdfb and program that accepts 2 bytes code. Modifying Thai font is not difficult but editors that accept 2 bytes code rarely exist now.
1 byte character set is not enough if we want to make multilingual environment. Unicode provide the solution for this problem. Unicode is 2 bytes character set, ideal for multilingual environment. Thai characters are located on A partition, from 0E00 to 0E7F. See Unicode organization for more information.
",
Prentice Hall.