Matt Johnson

Systems Programmer
Computing Support Group
Department of Computing
Imperial College London

Esoteric DoC Systems Hints

Telephone: (020) 7594 8440 (x48440)
Email: mwj@doc.ic.ac.uk
Web: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~mwj/

This page will house some hints relating to rare questions people have asked and which I've answered. Some of these may get promoted to an official CSG FAQ at some point, but for now, here seems like a good place.

We've had a few queries about reading and typing in foreign languages on DoC systems.

Reading foreign languages should work "out of the box" -- Windows will generally handle it well, Linux likewise, assuming that the fonts you have selected have reasonable codepages or the desktop environment can work out how to handle it.

Writing in foreign languages is slightly more difficult.

Under Windows:

1. Go to Control Panel, Keyboard, and select the Input Locales tab.
2. Click Add... and select an appropriate Input Locale (e.g. Hebrew), click Ok.
3. Ensure that Enable indicator on taskbar is ticked.
4. Click Ok.

You will now get a box in the system tray which says EN. If you click on this, you will get a menu from which you can select your new locale.

Under Linux (KDE3):

1. Go to the K Menu, Control Center.
2. Select Accessibility.
3. If you want to change the KDE presentation language (not recommended! This will confuse or annoy CSG and/or lab demonstrators if you ask for help!), select Country - Region or Language.
4. To add a new keyboard mapping, select Keyboard Layout.
5. Ensure that Enable keyboard layouts is ticked.
6. Select an appropriate layout from the Additional layouts list.
7. Click Ok.

You will now get a flag icon in the icon tray (bottom right of the screen). If you click on this, the current locale will be toggled. If you right-click, you can select the locale.