Foriegn Language Locales in KDE 3.0? [SuSE 8.1]

shassouneh · 02-10-2003, 05:41 PM

Hi All,
I canoot get the arabic language locale to work properly in KDE 3.0 (SuSE Linux Professional 8.1).
It shows characters as boxes rather than letters. I have installed both KDE packages for arabic language support (translations and Arabic for KDE).

Can anyone help me with this?
Thank you in advance

Here are two sample screenshots of what things look like when i try to turn on arabic support

right click->Save Target As or Save Link Target As

right click->Save Target As or Save Link Target As

IMPORTANT NOTE: I Always Log Out/Log in every time I change the settings, so i know that's not the problem

shassouneh · 02-11-2003, 02:38 AM

anyone?

Mara · 02-11-2003, 08:32 AM

I can't get to the images, but in my opinion it's because you don't have Arabic fonts installed (or don't have them installed properly).

shassouneh · 02-11-2003, 01:35 PM

I installed the arabic fonts from an RPM package I found o the netand that solved part of the problerm. Now two problems still exist:

1.) The fonts have to be manually loaded EVERY TIME by issuing this command

xset fp+ /usr/lib/X11/fonts/arabic/misc

Iss there a way to automate this???

2.) Several things have not yet been translated and are shown as boxes. Can they be forced to be shown in US English?

Mara · 02-11-2003, 03:38 PM

1) Yes, you neeed to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. Somewhere at the begging of the file there's line
FontPath "somethingthere"
You need to add /usr/lib/X11/fonts/arabic/misc into it. The entries are separated by commas.

2) Boxes usually mean a wrong character (which is not defined in a font). So I guess it tries to pring it in English, but you may not have Latin characters in the font. If that's true, try to find a font that has both Arabic and Latin characters.

shassouneh · 02-11-2003, 05:20 PM

thanx for the help and clarification Mara. certainly much appreciated. Unfortunately, it was like puling teeth to get the arabic font rpm to begin with. I doubt I'd find one that included both character sets.
As for the XF86Config trick, I will try that and see if it does any good.
thanx again

Mara · 02-12-2003, 03:04 AM

I guess the best solution for you is to search for Unicode fonts. They have support for all the languages. It's sometimes a great help...

shassouneh · 02-12-2003, 01:52 PM

Cool. Thanx again for all the help Mara.
Do you know a good place for me to sniff around for fonts, or should I just google it?

Mara · 02-13-2003, 11:41 AM

Google, I suppose. Don't know any source of Arabic fonts...

shassouneh · 02-13-2003, 02:26 PM

Cool. Thanx again for all the help Mara. I did a quick google search, and it didn't find any useful results. The closest match I found is the arabic font I am already using, which is made by some group that collaborates directly with the KDE group. I guess it is my best option right now. I would have to learn what each of the boxed items means, and memorize rather than fget them to work