<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">To: OLPC localization list<div>Cc: Marina and Nancie, OLPC Vietnam</div><div><br></div><div>Marina sent this:<br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message [the numbers refer to the dead key which applies the accent]:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">I checked all letters and there are other letters that do not work:<br>1. So the "hook above" = 6 does not work at all with any letters, not just letter "a".<br>2. 7 [tilde above] does not work with "e".<br>3. 9 [dot under] does not work with any letters.<br>4. I still can not type numbers or dollar sign. "=" Sign shows wiered not readable in any language.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>Please forward it to the local team. Thanks.</span></blockquote><div><br></div>For background:</div><div><br></div><div>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):</div><div><br></div><div>1 = ă (0xC483)</div><div>2 = â (0xC3A2)</div><div>3 = ê (0xC3AA)</div><div>4 = ô (0xC3B4)</div><div>5 = added grave accent (dấu huyền)</div><div>6 = added hook above (dấu hỏi)</div><div>7 = added tilde above (dấu ngã)</div><div>8 = added acute accent (dấu sắc)</div><div>9 = added dot under (dấu nặng)</div><div>10 = đ (0xE282AB)</div><div>) = Đ (0xC490)</div><div>= = ₫ (0xE282AB)</div><div>[ = ư (0xC6B0)</div><div>] = ơ (0xC6A1)</div><div><div><br></div></div><div>Marina's message is not good news. However, it's not entirely unexpected. :S</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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. :(</div><div><br></div><div>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).</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.)</div><div><br></div><div>I'd like to use this handy space at the end of my email to put in a plug for Project Gutenberg:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page">http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page</a></div><div><br></div><div>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!</div><br><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">from Clytie </span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team</span></font></p><div><br></div></div></span></div><div>[1] <a href="http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page">http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page</a></div><div><br></div><div>[2] <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/urwvn/">http://freshmeat.net/projects/urwvn/</a></div></div></body></html>