#7857 NORM 8.2.0 (: localization support for alternate digits (arabic and south/east asian locales)

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#7857: localization support for alternate digits (arabic and south/east asian
locales)
--------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  dupuy         |         Owner:                      
     Type:  enhancement   |        Status:  new                 
 Priority:  normal        |     Milestone:  8.2.0 (was Update.2)
Component:  not assigned  |       Version:  not specified       
 Keywords:                |   Next_action:  never set           
 Verified:  0             |     Blockedby:                      
 Blocking:                |  
--------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
 I'm splitting off a new ticket for an issue I raised in #7800 about the
 use of local-language digit forms in applications.  The context in that
 ticket is Arabic locales, but the issue applies to many other south- and
 east- asian locales (e.g. Nepali, Khmer, etc.)

 I wrote:

 While you're editing these translations, I wonder if you should use %Id
 rather than %d to get Arabic-Indic digits (۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹) rather than Latin
 digits (0123456789). Hmmm...just tried that out, and although C's sprintf
 (on my Fedora 7 system) uses the Arabic-Indic digits for %Id when the
 locale is set to "fa_IR" (but not "fa" or "ar"), Python just spits out:

 ValueError: unsupported format character 'I' (0x49)

 so I guess the answer to this is no. If using Arabic-Indic digits would
 make the Journal more kid-friendly, you might want to file a separate
 (low-priority) ticket about this, since it would require extra locale-
 specific work (for Arabic, Thai, Devanagari, and other languages with
 their own digits).

 Khaled Hosny replied:

 %Id isn't supported in python, also Arabic glibc locale definitions
 lack the needed support (can be fixed though). IIRC some one had a patch
 for this in python, I'll try to check this.

 Yes this is important for children in Egypt and the rest of Arabic world
 to the east of it, I don't know why I forgot this.


 There are several parts to adding support for these digits:

 1. patch to python to support %Id format flag for Sugar apps

 2. add LC_CTYPE locale support for alternate digit sets for Arabic,
 Nepali, Khmer, etc. (we might want to have variant locales with and
 without these, since some users may prefer to always use European digits)

 3. changes to localizations in Pootle to use %Id

 4. in the case of some applications (e.g. SocialCalc), additional
 internationalization may be necessary to allow alternate digit forms for
 both input and output, and possibly user-selection of alternate digit
 forms at a per-application, per-document, or per-field level (locale
 switching can be used to enable/disable alternate digits system-wide)

 The first two are significant hurdles (and require changes to upstream
 packages: python, glibc-i18n) but especially for children who have just
 learned the numbers in their native language, forcing them to learn the
 European digit systems as well is far from ideal, and Sugar/OLPC should
 strive to make it easier for them to become numerate.

 @alex

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7857>
One Laptop Per Child <http://laptop.org/>
OLPC bug tracking system