Hi all,
I'm trying to find out if Mandrake supports Persian/Farsi and if so, install it as an option. Unfortunately it wasn't too clear how to go about doing it, but I found a "Locale" tab in the "KDE Control Center". However no matter what locale I choose, the "Add Language" only gives me English as an option.

How do I install another language and the corresponding fonts?

Thanks and merci!

Okay, I found that under the "Mandrake Control Center" (apparently different than the "KDE Control Center") there is an option to install software. I clicked "Software Management" then "RpmDrake". I eventually found that by clicking "All packages" and then searching for "Farsi" and scrolling to the very bottom of the leftmost pane I found a package called locale-fa or something that said it supports Farsi. I inserted my install CD and it said "installing". Then it stopped. Now, the "KDE Control Center" STILL doesn't list a new language and worse yet, repeating the above NEVER SHOWS THE LOCALE-FA package ever again???? It seems installing it removes it from all search capabilities?

I assume Mandrake is broken!?!?? Can I install foreign languages on any other distro???

the soft ware installer lists only those packages that are not installed. The uninstaller lists the ones that are installed. So first uninstall whatever it is that you installed and then try installing it again. It seems that the installation didn't go right.

Okay, I tried to do that but RPMDrake kept crashing my entire system, so I rebooted, uninstalled, reinstalled, and it seems to have worked, but I still can't choose the language. When it installed, it said "all packages successfully installed" and "rpm -qa | grep locales" shows locales-fa as being installed. Unfortunately I can't show you the exact output, since I guess Mandrake/Linux doesn't support copy from terminal and paste to mozilla.

But anyway, I have:
locales-2.3.1.4-6mdk
locales-fa-2.3.1.4-6mdk
locales-en-2.3.1.4-6mdk
installed (according to rpm)

So why is English still the only option from the "KDE Control Center"? I assume there's something else I hafta do? I rebooted again but that didn't fix anything, and I couldn't find any HOWTOs online on Farsi or any help with Mandrake's documentation.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help.

Ok, you'll need to edit your `/.i18n file manually. And I'm not sure you can get farsi menus and all that in kde. Kde has its own internationalization packages which are called kde-i18n-{locale}. If there isn't one for farsi, then kde is not farsi ready yet.

I would create a new user to play around a bit. Login as that new user, open a terminal window and do
locale>~/.i18n
The ~/.i18n file is what specifies the locale of the user. When you open it with an editor, you'll see lots of entries with en_US or something like that. Replace all of them with fa_IR.UTF-8, logout and login again and see what the effects are.

quatsch>Thanks for all of your help. I tried what you suggested and it certainly affected all of my fonts, but they just turned into uglier English fonts.

I also downloaded a few non-kde-specific persian fonts with no luck and found a bunch of websites showing "how to", but their instructions didn't work for me (all the steps seemed to proceed fine, but I could never get any Farsi language option in the end).

I couldn't find any kde-i18n for Farsi, and after googling it doesn't seem Gnome is in any better shape. I'm extremely disappointed. Right now it seems Windows is the way to go, until Linux catches up on the internationalization-front. I'm bummed.

Thanks for your help though, it's appreciated.