15 December 2006

Installing Tamil Fonts in Linux

Many of my friends who use linux have constantly kept asking me how to read their favourite tamil sites in linux. Now, a few years ago installing tamil fonts in linux was a slight pain in the *** process. Now, it is a rather quick and dirty three step process (in case you use KDE) and a simple drag and drop in case you use GNOME.

So, off we go

1. Click on the links to download and save tamil fonts. This or This.
2. If you use GNOME, just drag and drop those files into nautilus file manager and voila it installs the fonts !
3. If you use KDE, fire up the KDE control interface by typing kcontrol in any xterm or konsole.
4. Click on System Administration -> Font Installer -> Add fonts. Just provide the fonts you downloaded and voila ;-)

Now all your favourite tamil websites can be read easily. Note that this applies to any fonts not just tamil ones ! Note that you need not even be a root user to install these fonts. After installing the fonts, set unicode as the character encoding in your browser. If you use firefox, View -> Character Encoding will get you there !

K.Shyam
Tags: Linux Fonts, Tamil

Posted by Unknown at 11:26 AM

6 Comments

  1. Blogger Krish posted at Friday, December 15, 2006 at 5:14:00 PM GMT+5:30  
    Does the unicode tamil fonts works in Firefox 2.0 in Kubuntu edgy??

    Still I have n't found a solution to the problem. The font is properly displaying in Title bar but not in the main window :(
  2. Blogger Krish posted at Friday, December 15, 2006 at 5:16:00 PM GMT+5:30  
    btw, in kubuntu edgy.. i could right click on the font and select Actions -> Install Font. Your font is installed.
  3. Blogger Unknown posted at Saturday, December 16, 2006 at 8:38:00 AM GMT+5:30  
    krish;
    that is another hot tip ! BTW, i use kubuntu edgy only ;-) the steps i have mentioned here applies across all distributions. it differs only in desktop usage
    K.Shyam
  4. Blogger Ponnarasi Kothandaraman posted at Monday, December 18, 2006 at 12:36:00 AM GMT+5:30  
    Aaaha title paathu mey maranthu poiten ;) Enakum oru title intha range'kku suggest panungalen ;) Hahaha..Kidding...
    Anyways jokes apart.. U have a very nice blog.. Keep writing..

    Seekramey kandukren ;)
    Tata 4 now! :)
  5. Blogger Balaji Chitra Ganesan posted at Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 11:43:00 PM GMT+5:30  
    i would suggest having atleast one from Unicode, TSCII and TAM fonts apart from ISO latin fonts provided by specific sites. TSCu_paranar is probably the most used unicode font. Ofcourse many linux distros give Lohit and Windows apparently gives Latha. i find most non-unicode tamil sites struggle with Firefox 2.0.

    installing mozilla add-ons like TamilKey and Tamil Language Pack also help.
  6. Anonymous Anonymous posted at Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 8:10:00 AM GMT+5:30  
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