Language support

[Jim Gettys]

On Sat, 2007-06-23 at 01:58 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
> To what extent has language support on the XO been tested? 

Reasonably, so far; we have to work more on getting localization done
that the technology itself at this moment, though some scripts coming at
us may be a challenge.
> I recall
> that there was a bug in the XO boot sequence where it could not accept
> letters with tildes such as ñ.
> 

The "console" is used during boot, and not generally used in a way that
requires wide internationalization.  All you can run there are Linux
command line programs. Once the window system is running, very different
technology is in use where full support is needed.

> We need at least
> 
> English
> French (official in Rwanda)
> Brazilian Portuguese, e.g. ãõàèìçê
> Spanish, where ll is traditionally one letter, as is ch.
> Libyan Arabic (Significantly different from Arabian Arabic, and with
> major differences even within Libya)
> Kinyarwanda
> Hausa/هَوُسَ (Latin and Arabic both?)
> Igbo
> Yoruba (èdè Yorùbá), e.g.
> Á À Ā É È Ē Ẹ / E̩ Ẹ́ / É̩ Ẹ̀ / È̩ Ẹ̄ / Ē̩ Í Ì Ī Ó Ò Ō Ọ / O̩ Ọ́/ Ó̩
> Ọ̀ / Ò̩ Ọ̄ / Ō̩ Ú Ù Ū Ṣ / S̩
> á à ā é è ē ẹ / e̩ ẹ́ / é̩ ẹ̀ / è̩ ẹ̄ / ē̩ í ì ī ó ò ō ọ / o̩ ọ́ / ó̩
> ọ̀ / ò̩ ọ̄ / ō̩ ú ù ū ṣ / s̩
> Thai?

And more you don't know about.

> 
> in the coming year, and probably others. "The major languages spoken
> in Nigeria are Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Edo, Efik, Adamawa, Fulfulde,
> Idoma, and Central Kanuri."--Wikipedia. There are more than 500 living
> languages in Nigeria.

Only a subset of the full list of languages is used in schools.  Many
languages are so small as there to be little written content available.

Go look at ethnologue.org for the full size of the problem.  There are
347 languages with > 1,000,000 speakers in the world.

> 
> I have friends who can test most of the languages I listed, and we can
> find native speakers of the others in the US as well as the target
> countries. I can exercise the keyboard layouts fully and help if more
> layouts are needed, as seems to be the case.
> 

There is a "localization at laptop.org" list to help organize such efforts.
We have technology coming on line over the next week or so to help in
the effort (RH has a new localization system we're planning to use).

-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child