Reading Sinhala
For some of you, the Sinhala language text in this blog may appear as a bunch of small boxes- or something equally irritating. This is because you still haven’t enabled support for the Sinhala language.
If you wish to be able to read/write in Sinhala (and Tamil), here are some very simple instructions on how to do that.
If you are using Windows XP (service pack 2):
- Download the Sinhala and Tamil enabling pack from this link:
http://www.siyabas.lk/files/SinhalaTamilKit_XP.exe (15.8 MB) - After closing all open programs, run the downloaded “exe” file.
- After the automatic installer completes, restart the computer.
That’s it, you are good to go!
If you want to make your Sinhala text look better:
- Download and install the MalithiWeb Unicode font.
- Specify “Malithi Web” as the default font for Sinhala (or complex script) from your web browser.
- For example, in IE6: Tools –> Internet options … –> click on the “Fonts …” button (at the bottom)
- Select “Sinhala” from the “Language script” list box.
- For “Web page font” select “Malithi Web”
Other Sinhala Unicode fonts that you can use are Kaputa Unicode, Kandy Unicode.
If you followed these directions but still run into trouble, please post a description of the problem as a comment to this post. I would be glad to help. On the other hand, if you do get it working, I would still love to hear from you…
Happy installing…
If you are using Windows 98 or Windows 2000 (and have Internet Explorer 6 or greater):
Download the Sinhala enabler for IE6 from this link:
http://www.siyabas.lk/english/files/Sinhala%20IE1.0.exe (1.5MB)
Run the downloaded exe file.
This allows you to read, but not write in Sinhala.
If you are using Windows Vista:
Windows Vista already supports Sinhala and Tamil.
However, you may need to download the “Vista Fix” from http://www.siyabas.lk/files/VistaQuickFix.exe (2.3 MB) and install it.
If you are using Linux:
Please refer to the excellent guide at http://www.nongnu.org/sinhala/doc/howto/sinhala-howto.html
im using mozilla 2.0.0.11 , i tried everything on this tutorial .but didnt work .( im tring to read lankadeepa web site )
thilina
December 31, 2007 at 11:07 am
Thilina,
The Lankadeepa web site (http://www.lankadeepa.lk/) does not use Unicode.
Many sites/organizations still have not made the transition to Unicode and are still stuck in the ugly old days of incompatible proprietary 8-bit encodings.
They will gradually make the transition- they have to- but until then, we have to still use those old fonts (in most cases, different ones for different sites) with the correct proprietary 8-bit encoding.
In the case of Lankadeepa you need a font using the Kandy encoding.
You can get one from http://www.info.lk
The URL for the file you should download is: http://www.info.lk/slword/kaputa_new.zip
Just extract the KAPUTA.TTF file from the downloaded zip file and copy it to the C:\Windows\Fonts
Apparently the Divaina (http://www.divaina.com/), Lakbima (http://www.lakbima.lk/), Ravaya (http://www.ravaya.lk/) also uses the same font.
Nalaka(නාලක)
January 1, 2008 at 10:50 pm