Offer of help for Amharic

[James]

On 16 Feb 2008, at 00:04, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>> I have got Amharic working on my G1G1 XO...
> Could you put that process on the Wiki? I'm assuming that you used
> SCIM, since there isn't an Ethiopian Unix keyboard.

Hi Edward,

Many thanks for providing me with a foothold!

The process for getting Amharic to work was already in the Wiki.  The  
problems I reported came from not following them :-(

I have updated the page at:

  <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ethiopian_Setup>

As you can see, I have added a section entitled "Detailed instructions  
for the rest of us", which assumes that the reader knows little about  
Linux or Amharic.  I hope you find this clear.

> Which activities permit Amharic input?

I've been working with Write, but input for all activities gets set to  
Amharic.  Even Terminal.  This caused me some alarm, until Simon  
Schampijer pointed out that you can use ctrl-alt-<neighborhood key> to  
bring up a virtual console which is always set to use US-English.

>> I spent some time today with a couple of Ethiopian friends, looking  
>> at the
>> Amharic keyboard input and display.
> Do you know anybody who can help with Tigrinya or Ge'ez (for  
> content, not UI)?

What exactly are you looking for?  My guess is that you want a text  
document in UTF-8 and a PDF or image file showing exactly how the text  
document ought to display, so that you can compare the OLPC output  
with the expected output.

Or are you looking for something else?

>> They encountered a number of issues both with the keyboard layout  
>> and with
>> the way the characters were displayed.
> Is that a font issue or a rendering issue, or can't you tell?

Amharic uses a different character for Y depending on whether it is a  
consonant (Yam) or a vowel (maY). My Ethiopian friend considers Power  
Ge'ez 2000 to be the standard for Amharic input, at least on Windows.   
This uses Shift-Y for the Y consonant and lowercase y for the vowel.   
The OLPC keyboard uses Y (with or without Shift) for the consonant and  
"ee" for the vowel.

Having to type "ee" instead of "y" could be considered a bug, but it  
may conform to a different standard that I am unaware of.

The Ge'ez characters are in fact syllables.  Each individual character  
indicates a consonant-vowel pair.

Set up the XO as instructed at <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ethiopian_Setup 
 >, then try the following in the Write activity.

1) Type "m" to see the basic "me" syllable character
2) Type "a": the character now changes shape and appears as the "ma"  
syllable character

The following appear to be Write bugs as they do not occur in Pippy or  
Terminal:

BUG 1) Type "me<space>": you get two "m" characters and a space.
BUG 2) Type "jee" (to get the "jy" syllable): you get two characters -  
"je""jy"

The following bug appears to be activity-independent:

BUG 3) Type Shift-S.  This should bring up a rounded w character, as  
shown on the
       S key in the image at <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Ethiopic-B3.png 
 >.
       Instead it shows the "tse" character which is shown on the  
[ key in the
       image.  To get the Shift-S character you need to press  
(lowercase) s twice.
       (In fact, the character shown on the S key is "Se", which  
requires you to
       type "sse").

BUG 4) Typing [ outputs [, and not the "tse" character which appears  
on the
       [ key in the Ethiopian keyboard.

These issues arose almost immediately, with the result that we did not  
explore much further.  I got a "tip of the iceberg" feeling.

>> How should I report these issues, and to whom?
> Bug reports, without question. Can you summarize them on the Amharic
> Wiki page, with links to the bugs? There is a template for bug
> references.

I will do this shortly, once I've understood the submission process.   
In the meantime, I have described the bugs at the foot of the page at <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ethiopian_Setup 
 >

> I put the quite primitive and feeble Ethiopian examples on the Input
> Methods page.

Here?  <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SCIM#Ethiopic.2FAmharic>

The text came up as question marks in Firefox on my Mac Intel (OS  
10.5) machine.  I downloaded and installed James Kass's Code2000  
shareware font from <http://code2000.net/CODE2000.ZIP>, then restarted  
Firefox and reloaded the page.  Now the fidels display correctly.

>> My knowledge of Amharic could be written on the back of a table  
>> napkin.
> Me, too.

The OLPC initiative really challenges all our assumptions, including  
the assumption that only those who master a given field can make a  
difference in that field.  It's both a humbling and an inspiring  
experience.

James