[Localization] Vietnamese input not working fully on the XO

[Simos Xenitellis]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 5:35 PM, Clytie Siddall <clytie at riverland.net.au> wrote:
> To: OLPC localization list
> Cc: Marina and Nancie, OLPC Vietnam
> Marina sent this:
>
> Begin forwarded message [the numbers refer to the dead key which applies the
> accent]:
>
> I checked all letters and there are other letters that do not work:
> 1. So the "hook above" = 6 does not work at all with any letters, not just
> letter "a".
> 2. 7 [tilde above] does not work with "e".
> 3. 9 [dot under] does not work with any letters.
> 4. I still can not type numbers or dollar sign. "=" Sign shows wiered not
> readable in any language.
> Please forward it to the local team. Thanks.
>
> For background:
> Vietnamese keyboard layouts use "dead" keys (pressed before or after the
> vowel) to add accents to vowels: the standard vowels, including "y", and six
> vowels already bearing accents. 12 base vowels × 6 accent states means
> Vietnamese has 72 vowels. To use a Vietnamese keyboard layout (including
> Unicode hex refs):
> 1 = ă (0xC483)
> 2 = â (0xC3A2)
> 3 = ê (0xC3AA)
> 4 = ô (0xC3B4)
> 5 = added grave accent (dấu huyền)
> 6 = added hook above (dấu hỏi)
> 7 = added tilde above (dấu ngã)
> 8 = added acute accent (dấu sắc)
> 9 = added dot under (dấu nặng)
> 10 = đ (0xE282AB)
> ) = Đ (0xC490)
> = = ₫ (0xE282AB)
> [ = ư (0xC6B0)
> ] = ơ (0xC6A1)
> Marina's message is not good news. However, it's not entirely unexpected. :S
> Vietnamese is a test case for Unicode support, because of its combined
> diacritics and its widely scattered range on the Unicode plane. Also, it's
> an ideographic CJK language roughly translated into a Roman alphabet. If
> your software supports Vietnamese, you have very robust Unicode support: the
> real deal.

Hi Clytie,

I can get the characters for 6, 7 and 9 in another keyboard layout, which means
that something is merely wrong in the keyboard layout you are using
for Vietnamese
on the OLPC.

To frame the issue, it is more like a case of not having the keyboard
layout tested early.

Technical background: I do not know whether Vietnamese uses 'SCIM' or 'GTK+ IM'
on the OLPC. Sayamindu?
1. If the OLPC uses 'SCIM', then you need to fix the SCIM layout for Vietnamese.
2. If the OLPC uses 'GTK+ IM', then those characters for cases 6, 7, 9
are verified to work,
so again it is a case of fixing the keyboard layout from XOrg. The
keyboard layout file
for Vietnamese is /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/vn

Simos

> So I have become accustomed to introducing Vietnamese translations to a
> piece of software or platform, and then having these sorts of problems.
> Unfortunately, I can't be of much help in solving them with the XO, because
> I don't have one. (I use a Mac.) We really need someone testing the language
> on the platform before it goes out in the field. I'm deeply embarrassed that
> people can't use it properly when they need to. :(
> In the problem described by Marina, it looks like only the acute (8) and
> grave (5) accents are being applied. This sounds like a Latin-1 (Western
> European languages) limitation to me. The acute and grave accent are
> available in the Latin-1 charset and thus many commonly-used but limited
> fonts. None of the other Vietnamese accents are. I don't know how you're
> defining your charsets and default Unicode fonts, but for Vietnamese you
> need UTF-8 and a pan-Unicode font. For a default pan-Unicode font, on Debian
> we use Dejavu, to which I contributed persistently to get the Vietnamese
> characters displaying correctly, if not beautifully. You can also use URWVN
> [2] which is designed for Vietnamese. Both font packages are GPL (freely
> available).
> The number and symbol characters should be accessible with the use of a
> control key. On the Mac it's "option". I guessed "control" for the XO, but I
> could well be wrong. How about "alt"? Marina, did you try each of the
> control keys? If you're getting odd symbols, that may indicate that you're
> looking at a higher "layer" of the font. You want the second layer, however
> you access that on the XO. Do you have a Keyboard Viewer on the XO? That
> kind of tool shows you a keyboard on the screen, then shows different
> characters depending on what control keys you press.
> I'm hoping the accent-application is just a default-font issue. Sayamindu,
> what can you tell me about this? And does any OLPC person in Australia have
> the opportunity to ship me a temporary XO so I can help sort things out? (I
> live in Renmark, in South Australia: if you travel down the Sturt Highway
> between Adelaide and the Eastern states, you go right past my house.)
> I'd like to use this handy space at the end of my email to put in a plug for
> Project Gutenberg:
> http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
> the first and best truly free ebook repository online. If you have access to
> out-of-copyright books in any language, or can assign copyright for a text,
> please contribute the text to Project Gutenberg. Marina reminded me today
> just how much we need more free, translated or native-language ebooks. Free
> it, scan it, distribute it!
>
> from Clytie
>
> Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team
>
> [1] http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> [2] http://freshmeat.net/projects/urwvn/
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