Subject: Re: multi-lingual support under Unix
From: Mike Nordell (tamlin@algonet.se)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2000 - 08:45:34 CST
Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> What we will need is some kind of keyboard switching mechanism
> that would allow to translate keyboard input into appropriate
> unicode values based on a language/keyboard the user chooses.
This is the responsibility of the OS/user-environment as I see it. It is not
something every application should implement by itself (just think of the
bloat).
Another thing that I came to think of, and I'm not sure it's im place
already:
We should be able to change *sections* of a document to different languages.
This is *needed* information for at least the spell-checker. Our beloved
comparable app Word does indeed allow you to set different languages for
pieces of a document.
As for implementation, I think it should only be allowed at the paragraph
level. But as for spell-checking, I also believe we should have a flag (only
dynamic/run-time) telling "the user don't want this word spell-checked".
Because of this, I also came to think of *massive* optimizations we probably
could do re. the runtime behaviour of AW. Instead of posting again re. this,
I'll try to scribble down my thoughts here so I don't forget'em, and if this
is already in place/have been though of: please just let me know.
For the runtime behaviour re. formatting, what do we really need?
1. A list of fonts (containing *all* the different attributes all fonts used
in the doc have). This is referred to by its runtime-ID.
Example:
We have a document containing (pseudo-doc)
<Courier;10pt;normal>Hi all, I'm a <bold>bold</bold> word</courier>
This would create two entries in the fonts container:
#1. Courier, 10pt, normal
#2. Courier, 10pt, bold
or we could even implement it in a more efficient fashion, let #2 become
#2. <inherits font #1>, overrides it with "bold".
It just struck me as the most reasonable way of doing this. Comments,
criticism or praise? :-)
/Mike - please don't cc
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