[Localization] Language input on XO

[Clytie Siddall]

Hi everyone :)

In one of my increasingly brief periods of capability, I noticed the OLPC.vn activity. It is heartwarming to see my localization work actually being used.

However, on this page:

http://saigonolpc.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/class-four/

the instructor says they can't input Vietnamese on the XO. Is this true?

Since I'm a Mac user (Vietnamese has always been available by default in OSX), I am unfamiliar with the input-system underpinnings of the XO. However, our Debian localization "task" installs an input package (one of xvnkb and x-unikey, both available) and uses the default Unicode font DejaVu (on which I collaborated to make sure it rendered Vietnamese adequately). There are also plenty of free Unicode fonts designed for Vietnamese: I generally recommend the GPL package URWVN:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/urwvn/

Vietnamese requires UTF-8, since it's all over the Unicode plane. The combined diacritics make Vietnamese a test case for Unicode support. However, Vietnamese input has been readily available to Linux users for some time now.

How can I check that Vietnamese input is possible on the XO, and make sure it's enabled, available and obvious on laptops being issued to Vietnamese projects?

Thankyou for any advice you can offer. :)

from Clytie 

Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team