This is the tricky part. Most applications support ISO-8859-1 character set. For example, emacs can display ISO-8859-1 character. If we set emacs to display ISO-8859-1 and use Thai font, you can edit Thai document with emacs. But this is not a good policy. You should avoid using this trick as possible. What we need is Thai locale or Thai supported applications to manage these things.
To make X window application displays Thai font,
you should run the application with -fn option. For example,
%xedit -fn thai8x16
thai8x16 is just a one of Thai font names. You can see all
available fonts by command xlfonts.
If you don't want to fill -fn option every time you run
application. You should set Thai font in your ~/.Xdefaults or
~/.Xresources like this
XTerm*font: thai8x16
txterm is Thai version of xterm. There are several programs running
under xterm such as shell, pine, vi, less, etc. We can type Thai
characters without any problems with txterm. Txterm also provides
its own Thai input method by pressing " F1 " key. Txterm will
use fonts thai9x13 as default Thai font. You can change this by add -fn option.
You can get txterm from
Thaigate or
ZzzThai.
bash shell :Normally, shell accepts only ASCII character set. To type Thai characters in
shell command line, you should set environment LC_CTYPE to
iso_8859_1.
I don't set LC_CTYPE environment variable to
iso_8859_1 because this environment variable will effect
other applications too. With bash shell, you can specify which
environment variable to be passed to the application. For example, I can make
a fake Thai X
terminal with this syntax.
LC_CTYPE=iso_8859_1 xterm -fn thai8x16
txterm.
ls :If you name a filename in Thai. Issue the command as
ls -N
You may set alias in ~/.bashrc or ~/.cshrc, so
you can type ls without option. If you don't use ls with
-N option, you may see Thai filename as ?????.
Mule stands for " Multilingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs " . It has
the same functions as emacs and supports many languages. Mule provides
its own input method, so you don't need any configuration for typing Thai. You
needs only Thai fonts for mule which you can get from,
ZzzThai or
Etl site.
These Thai fonts are fixed width fonts.
You need some configuration for mule. Puts the following lines in
your .emacs.
;;
;; Thai System, add in .emacs
;;
(set-file-coding-system-for-read '*tis620*)
(set-default-file-coding-system '*tis620*)
(set-display-coding-system '*tis620*)
(set-keyboard-coding-system '*tis620*)
(setq-deafault quail-current-package (assoc "thai" quail-package-alist))
.Xdefaults.
!
! Emacs, Mule - Font menu
!
Emacs*FontSetList: thai14, thai16, thai24
Emacs*FontSet-thai14:\
-etl-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-m-70-tis620.2529-1
Emacs*FontSet-thai16:\
-etl-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-m-80-tis620.2529-1
Emacs*FontSet-thai24:\
-etl-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-500-72-72-m-120-tis620.2529-1
When you hold shift key and press
left mouse's button, you can select Thai fonts to display in mule window.
To type Thai characters, press " Ctrl + ] " . To type English, press
" Ctrl + ] " again.
You can get mule from
ElectroTechnical Laboratory(ETL)
Vi should be run on txterm.
In the past, we could not send 8-bit characters through E-mail. Now, although
mail transfer agent can handle 8-bit characters but some old mail transfer
agent can not.
We can send Thai e-mail by using e-mail application that supports MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
E-mail applications that support
MIME are pine, elm, Netscape mail, etc.
Put the following definition in your ~/.pinerc file:
character-set=ISO-8859-1
Setup option in pine window. You can find
it under Config. You can read Thai news from pine, too.
Pine should be run in txterm.
If you have Thai fonts in your system. Just set Thai font from preference. Thai fonts will appear in User defined area. See http://www.fedu.uec.ac.jp/ZzzThai/unix for setting Thai language on Netscape.
Some movement about Thai Mozilla project at http://members.xoom.com/inThai/mozthai.html.
ss is a dictionary based Thai word separation program similar to
cttex. It can be used to insert a configurable string between
Thai words. It can also show words that cannot be found in the
dictionary. More words can be added to the dictionary. Developed by Mr.Teera
Kittichareonpot.
We can use this program to insert < WBR > tag between Thai words in html
file. Browser will display Thai homepage better than normal html document.
Xzthai, this is the Tcl/Tk application for mapping Thai keyboard on any
keyboard with graphical user interface. Also provides simple editor and
keyboard layout figure. It actually uses
xmodmap program in background to map Thai
keyboard. This may be useful for commercial X server and X server on UNIX.
Thai2ps is used to convert plain text file to postscript file.You can use
ghostscript(gs) to print your Thai document. For better quality document,
you have to use (La)TeX.
Dr. Manop Wongsaisuwan first tried to use Thai language with latex. He
wrote some perl script as filter for latex source code that contains Thai
language. Then pass the result to latex. Mr. Vuthichai Ampornaramvech
used this concept and wrote a program in C language, cttex, to handle this. It runs
faster and makes Thai word segmentation based on dictionary. Cttex also
fixes the position of Thai characters in word, so SARA and WANNAYUK will be
placed in the beautiful position.
You can find Thai latex filter from http://thaigate.nacsis.ac.jp/files/ttex.html.
You must have latex installed in your computer.
First, download Thai postscript (Type1) fonts, tfm fonts and Thai style
file. These fonts are needed by
Latex. This is the list of files you should download.
tfm fonts:
dbtt.tfm dbttb.tfm dbttbi.tfm dbtti.tfm
postscript fonts:
dbtt.pfa dbttb.pfa dbttbi.pfa dbtti.pfa
style files:
thai.sty sakka.sty
Thai Latex filter:
cttex
Sample Latex file:
ttex.ttex test.ttex
There is latex's directory at
/usr/lib/texmf/texmf/ (RedHat 5.0). I will call /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/ as
" $texroot " . We will concentrate at $texroot/texmf/ directory.
In $texroot/texmf/ directory, there are many files
about tex's configuration. You have to edit files in dvips, fonts, tex subdirectories.
Add the following lines to $texroot/texmf/dvips/misc/psfonts.map
dbtt DBThaiText <dbtt.pfa
dbttb DBThaiTextBold <dbttb.pfa
dbttbi DBThaiTextBoldItalic <dbttbi.pfa
dbtti DBThaiTextItalic <dbtti.pfa
Make a new directories and copy files to the appropriate directories.
%mkdir /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/fonts/tfm/public/thai
%mkdir /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/fonts/type1/public/thai
%mkdir /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/tex/generic/thai
%cp *.tfm /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/fonts/tfm/public/thai
%cp *.pfa /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/fonts/type1/public/thai
%cp *.sty /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/tex/generic/thai
Run texhash or MakeTeXls-R(in some system) to update Tex database.
%/usr/bin/texhash
texhash: updating /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/ls-R ...
texhash: Done.
LaTeX filterWe can use cttex as filter like this,
%cttex < ttex.ttex > ttex.tex
C-TTeX $Revivsion: 1.15 $
Usage : cttex [cutcode] < infile > outfile
Usage : cutcode=0 forces operation in HTML mode.
Build-in dictionary size: 9945 words
343
Done
%latex ttex.tex
...
%xdvi ttex.dvi
%dvips -o ttex.ps ttex.dvi
Finally, you can print ttex.ps by using gs or lpr. You must configure
printer before printing. See man-pages of printcap, gs, lpr
for more information.
LaTex source fileFor new latex user, lyx is helpful. But I recommend to use mule
to edit Thai latex source file because mule supports Thai language
and it is a powerful editor. You may take a look a
Thai Latex tutorial.
Because Xt based applications allow user to configure the applications by resources. We can make the menu or label to be Thai language.
For example, if you want xman to display Thai labels. You may add
these lines in your .Xdefaults
......
!! Xman section
Xman*Font: thai8x16
Xman*helpButton.Label: ªèÇÂ
Xman*quitButton.Label: ÍÍ¡
Xman*manpageButton.Label: ¤ÙèÁ×Í¡ÒÃãªé
......
You can use the same idea to set window manager to be more Thai environment too.
Thai Extension for Linux is a installation package comes with applicaions and Thai fonts. You don't have to configure Linux system and applications by yourself. Let TE do configuration task for you. After installation, you can use Thai language suddenly. Get TE from ftp://fedu.uec.ac.jp/pub/thai/UEC/ZzzThai/Software/Linux/