[Localization] Vietnamese input not working fully on the XO

[Clytie Siddall]

Hey, Simos! Long time no e. Hope everything is going well for you. :)

On 16/03/2010, at 4:37 AM, Simos Xenitellis wrote:

> 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.

Definitely. The usual Linux layouts work correctly on other machines. The OSX layouts work correctly. Even Windows inputs Vietnamese, if you go through a tortuous setup process with extra packages. (Heh, Simos, did you see that Windows is finally going to have a Vietnamese localization? I think it's a great compliment to our progress with FLOSS. For some time, users have been able to run a Linux computer entirely in Vietnamese, including the install and setup processes, if they install Debian and use GNOME. Worried about the WTO deadline and 90 million potential users, are we, M$?)

Note: initial keyboard layouts do have teething problems. I can remember that the initial Vietnamese layout on OSX turned out to be decomposed, rather than composed Unicode (reported and fixed way back then). This resulted in separation between the base character and the accent in programs based on Carbon. That was freaky: I thought I was seeing things. Sometimes the accent would separate from the parent vowel and follow the cursor around the screen!

As I said, Vietnamese is a useful test case for Unicode support. ;)
> 
> To frame the issue, it is more like a case of not having the keyboard
> layout tested early.

Oh, yes. That is exactly the problem. I'm localizing blind here.
> 
> 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

Thanks for your help, Simos. :)

from Clytie 

Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team