What is available?

• Updated LKLUG Unicode Sinhala font
• libicu (renderer used by Open Office) with partial Sinhala support
• SCIM transliterated input method
• Enable Pango in firefox

How to install

1. Add to /etc/apt/sources.list
   deb http://sinhala.sourceforge.net/debian/i386/dapper/ ./
2. Update repository metadata:
   apt-get update
3. Install Sinhala packages:
   apt-get install sinhala-gnu-linux
4. Upgrade libicu package:
   apt-get upgrade
5. Logout and login again because environment variables need to be set/updated (NO NEED TO REBOOT)

How to test

1. Visit http://si.wikipedia.org/ and see if the Sinhala letters render correctly.
2. Copy and paste some of the content from Sinhala wikipedia to Open Office Writer. Then highlight the Sinhala text and choose the LKLUG font to display them.
3. To test SCIM, press Control-space whilst you are running a Gnome application.

The 'sinhala' CVS module on the LKLUG webserver, containing patches and source code for adding Sinhala support to GNU/Linux, has officially been moved to Sourceforge. You can access the Sourceforge Sinhala project's CVS at:

http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=91319

NOTE: Eventually, the 'sinhala' CVS module on the LKLUG webserver will not be publicly accessible.

Please use the 'sinhala' CVS module on Sourceforge from now on. You can find the Sourceforge Sinhala project page at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sinhala

The two GNU/Linux distros I'm paying the most attention to are Fedora Core and Ubuntu. Interestingly, these two distros decided to address enabling Pango in Firefox in completely different ways.

Fedora Core 5

Since Fedora Core 4, Pango is ENABLED in Firefox by default. In order to DISABLE Pango in Firefox, an environment variable has to be set:

MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1

You can see the difference by running Firefox at the command line like so:

# MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 firefox

/usr/bin/firefox contains an explanation:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
##
## In order to better support certain scripts (such as Indic and some CJK 
## scripts), Fedora builds its Firefox, with permission from the Mozilla 
## Corporation, with the Pango system as its text renderer.  This change 
## is known to break rendering of MathML, and may negatively impact 
## performance on some pages.  To disable the use of Pango, set 
## MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 in your environment before launching Firefox.
##
#
# MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1
# export MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO
#
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Ubuntu 6.06

On the other hand Ubuntu 6.06, decided to DISABLE Pango in Firefox by default except for a pre-determined list of locales.

The extensive discussion can be found here:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/32561

/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox contains the code:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
if [ "x${MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO}" = x ]; then
    if egrep '^(bn|gu|hi|kn|ml|mr|ne|pa|ta|te)_' \
        /var/lib/locales/supported.d/*[^~] >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0
    else
        MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1
    fi
    export MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO
fi
if [ "x${MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO}" = x0 ]; then
    unset MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO
fi
-------------------------------------------------------------------

This means that Ubuntu 6.06 users that need to ENABLE Pango in Firefox need to set an environment variable:

MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0

You can see the difference by running Firefox at the command line like so:

# MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0 mozilla-firefox

Go and try using Unicode Sinhala to do a search in Google ...

e.g. සිංහල linux

Search Result

Red Hat is going to ship the LKLUG Sinhala true type font in the next version of their distributions.

The LKLUG Sinhala true type font can be downloaded from:

http://sinhala.sourceforge.net/files/lklug.ttf

My partial Sinhala support patch to ICU 3.4 (used by Open Office 2):

http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/sinhala/patches/icu-3.4-sinhala1.patch?root=sinhala

has been added by Red Hat to recently released ICU RPM libraries. They can be downloaded from:
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/development/i386/Fedora/RPMS/

From the Redhat mail archive:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-beta-list/2006-May/msg00064.html

icu-3.4-8
---------
* Wed May 03 2006 Caolan McNamara - 3.4-8
- add Harshula's icu-3.4-sinhala1.patch for some Sinhala support

We are finally updating the sinhala.linux.lk website. Drupal is being deployed to manage the content.

So far I have found it quite intuitive, needed to first understand the menu and navigation system and then the content type.

UPDATE: The content from sinhala.linux.lk has been moved to lug.lk. Drupal was finally deployed on {linux,lug}.lk in March 2008

Sri Lankan FOSS community together with LKLUG had driven an event of FOSS awareness and Technical seminars and workshops in Colombo and Kandy targeting schools, universities and general public. This set of events conducted from 5th to 11th September 2005. Apart from the Local key note speakers, Debian project member Martin Michlmayr was present on the event.

LK-LUG participated at the EDEX 2005 exhibition at BMICH from 4th to 6th of March. The booth was sponsored by Open System Technologies (Pvt) Ltd (OST), a RedHat technology partner in Sri Lanka. EDEX was organized by Royal College with special emphasis on career guidance.

The booth spanned two stalls with OST taking up half. LK-LUG hosted two HP desktops with TFT flat screens, one HP laptor Prof Computers (Thank you!). A multimedia projector attached to Bud's Barebone system with surround sound was playing movies including Revolution OS, Spider Man and Lord of the Rings.

Viraj managed to print some T shirts with the picture of a GNU playing a recorder at the front and the text `Linux: Because a computer is a terrible thing to waste!'. They can still be
bought from Narada Center.

We would like to thank all for helping us to make our stall a success. Specially to our sponsors Red Hat and their local partner OST (Pvt) Ltd.

And a special thank goes to Bhikku Mettavihari of the Narada Centre for his efforts and motivation that he gave to all LKLUGers to participate in the exhibition.