Biblical Hebrew in Ubuntu Hardy Heron

A Church article with Comments posted 10 October 2008.
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Hebrew, Greek, and English living together in OpenOffice.org

Hebrew, Greek, and English living together in OpenOffice.org

Here’s the process for installing Biblical Hebrew input method support for Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

  1. First, go install SCIM as described in my instructions on installing Koine Greek, steps 1-4 (but replace gutsy with hardy).
  2. Download the “Ezra 2.51 source and font release” from the SIL Non-Roman Script Initiative on this page.
  3. Extract the archive and compile the keyboard with kmflcomp EZRAUNI24.KMN
  4. Run scim-setup, click on the KMFL option, click install, then browse to the compiled .kmfl file to install the input method.
  5. Save the settings. You’ll also probably need to log out and log back in for everything to work right.
  6. Browse through the included Ezra SIL Keyboard Chart. Hebrew is not as keyboard-intuitive as Greek.

Special thanks to Sheila Harrison at the Non-Roman Script Initiative for pointing me at the right package to download.

Update: Sheila writes:

Thank you for giving others a chance to work through the process more easily. I appreciate your comment on the web page, but thanks should really go to Lorna Priest, who reminded me that the source was on the download page. I knew it was available somewhere but hadn’t double checked it yet.

Koine Greek in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

A Tech article with Comments posted 9 November 2007.
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Here’s the simple process for installing Koine Greek input method support for Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon:

  1. Make sure you have scim installed
  2. Add this repository to your apt sources: deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu gutsy main
  3. sudo aptitude update
  4. sudo aptitude install scim-kmfl-imengine kmflcomp
  5. Download scim-greek-koine.tar.gz, which contains a KMFL engine file I got from somewhere else that I have modified to work.
  6. Extract the tarfile and compile the kmfl file by running kmflcomp GrkPolyComp.KMN
  7. Run scim-setup, click on the new “KMFL” option, click install, browse to the GrkPolyComp.kmfl file you just compiled.

It was a twisty road to get to this point, so if it doesn’t work for you, post in the comments and I’ll try to help you work it out.