Roozbeh Pournader | 1 Feb 2009 08:42
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Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

I was trying to avoid fontconfig, but it caught me at the end. Trying
to figure out which languages in comps are supported by which font, to
be able to include them in the language group, I compared the list of
languages in F11's comps file with the orthography lists fontconfig
supports.

To my surprise, some were missing/problematic. The list is here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N/LanguageSupportCriteria/Missing_fontconfig

I also found quite a few problems with existing orth files in
fontconfig that I'm working on fixing: http://tinyurl.com/dbk6a8

Since fontconfig support is critical for any language Fedora claims to
support [1], I think we should remove the language groups from comps
file if we don't have a fontconfig orthography file for it. I went and
updated the language criteria page we have here, adding a fontconfig
step:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N/LanguageSupportCriteria

For the specific language cases, I went and filed upstream bugs
against fontconfig for all I could find, except for Berber, which is a
bit problematic by nature (language code used is actually for a family
of languages, glibc locales are incomplete, Latin/Tifinagh/Arabic
script division is not along country lines...).

This is a report. I would appreciate help and feedback, especially
your thoughts about fontconfig .orth requirements for claiming
language support in Fedora.
(Continue reading)

Nicolas Mailhot | 1 Feb 2009 11:40
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Re: Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

Le samedi 31 janvier 2009 à 23:42 -0800, Roozbeh Pournader a écrit :
> I was trying to avoid fontconfig, but it caught me at the end. Trying
> to figure out which languages in comps are supported by which font, to
> be able to include them in the language group, I compared the list of
> languages in F11's comps file with the orthography lists fontconfig
> supports.
> 
> To my surprise, some were missing/problematic. The list is here:
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N/LanguageSupportCriteria/Missing_fontconfig

I'd be very careful to redefine tagalog for example. The tagalog script
is definitely not latin and has a specific unicode block, iso 15924
script tag, and specific supporting fonts

http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Pmorrow_Tagalog_Doctrina_1593_fonts

IMHO we've been conflating too many different notions (country, region,
language, script) in a few short locale tags and what you see is just
the system breaking appart for non-mainstream languages/scripts.

> I also found quite a few problems with existing orth files in
> fontconfig that I'm working on fixing: http://tinyurl.com/dbk6a8

This is something for Behdad. I hear he's cutting a new fontconfig
version right now, you may want to catch him before he's done and the
projects wents back to its usual 6-8 months sleepiness ;).

> Since fontconfig support is critical for any language Fedora claims to
(Continue reading)

Roozbeh Pournader | 1 Feb 2009 14:34
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Re: Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd be very careful to redefine tagalog for example. The tagalog script
> is definitely not latin and has a specific unicode block, iso 15924
> script tag, and specific supporting fonts
>
> http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Pmorrow_Tagalog_Doctrina_1593_fonts

No worries. I know all that. According to the Unicode Standard, that
script has not been much used for Tagalog since mid-1700s. The Tagalog
script in Unicode is an archaic script only, mostly for scholarly use:

http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19846

> IMHO we've been conflating too many different notions (country, region,
> language, script) in a few short locale tags and what you see is just
> the system breaking appart for non-mainstream languages/scripts.

That's very true. I've been talking with Behdad to try to do a bit or
redesigning, and we had a few ideas, like this bug, trying to get BCP
47 into fontconfig and somehow solving the glibc locale naming
problem:

http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19869

I would appreciate your feedback. (Of course, we can't fix this in
this release.)

> This is something for Behdad. I hear he's cutting a new fontconfig
(Continue reading)

Nicolas Mailhot | 1 Feb 2009 14:46
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Re: Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

Le dimanche 01 février 2009 à 05:34 -0800, Roozbeh Pournader a écrit :
> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Nicolas Mailhot

> > What you want is to help the different contributors to a language group
> > to:
> > — identify other bits are missing
> > — ping in the right place so they get added
> >
> > Otherwise everyone will just wait for everyone else.
> 
> I'm sorry Nicolas, but I don't understand. Would you consider
> rewording? Are you saying that I should not have been trying to create
> the missing orth files myself? Or fix the buggy ones?

No, I'm saying completeness should not be a requirement to create a new
language group, but the aim should be to help people identify the
missing bits so they can ping someone else (like you:;)) to provide
them.

--

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Nicolas Mailhot
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Roozbeh Pournader | 1 Feb 2009 14:50
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Re: Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot@...> wrote:
> No, I'm saying completeness should not be a requirement to create a new
> language group, but the aim should be to help people identify the
> missing bits so they can ping someone else (like you:;)) to provide
> them.

Got it. I guess this really means I should try to document the
process, like the great documentation I'm seeing at the fonts sig!
(not that i can reach the quality ;))

Roozbeh

Gmane