I was wondering if there was a way to install arabic language support for my system. Im using gentoo. I need to have it so that i can type in english and maybe have a button or something that i can use to switch it to arabic so that when i type it uses arabic letters. Ive search google and the gentoo site but can't find anything really useful.

I'm not sure if this will help or not, but I use "Smart Common Input Method server" (scim) - you install the main program, plus tables for whatever language you want to input. I use it for Chinese, but as far as I can tell it supports a ton of languages - including arabic - just as long as you install the right "tables" for the language you want.

I hope that gives you a starting point - I'd be more specific but I have no experience inputting arabic nor using gentoo. Good luck!

Hi,

I've never tried Gentoo, but I hope these instructions are generic enough for you to get something useful happening.

You will need to make sure you have Arabic locale files for KDE installed, they should be somewhere on your install disks, the file name will be something like kde-i18n-ar-version .You will also need some Arabic fonts.

Now, go to the KDE configuration menu and from the Accessibility submenu select Keyboard Layouts. Check the enable keyboard layouts, select "ar" as an option and then you can toggle this from the applet at the bottom right hand corner next to the clock on the KDE toolbar...

Hope it works! )

Cheers,

jdw