Re: platform support for Unicode fonts (Win32)

From: Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Apr 27 2002 - 10:25:28 EDT

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     --- Paul Rohr <paul@abisource.com> wrote: > Even
    without using the Bidi build, I'd say the
    > results are quite promising.
    > Some preliminary conclusions:
    >
    > 1. Content in over 20 languages Just Works. Those
    > languages have ispell
    > dictionaries, and given a good enough font (in this
    > case, the Times New
    > Roman that ships with NT 4.0) they render cleanly.
    >
    > 2. Content in another 8 languages also renders
    > cleanly. It might be worth
    > doing some evangelizing to recruit folks to create
    > ispell dictionaries for
    > those languages so they Just Work too.
    >
    > 3. I was unable to test another 7 languages that do
    > have ispell
    > dictionaries, because I couldn't find a UTF-8
    > translation of the Unicode
    > motto. However, given the encoding limitations of
    > ispell, I'd be willing to
    > bet that most of them Just Work too.

    I just posted a few messages to Usenet asking for
    translations so maybe we'll get some more (:

    Andrew Dunbar.

    > 4. Likewise, I was unable to test another 2
    > languages that we currently
    > have translators for -- Indonesian (id-ID) and Welsh
    > (cy-GB). Neither
    > appeared on other Unicode test pages.
    >
    > bottom line
    > -----------
    > If you're keeping track at home, that's a total of
    > approximately 35 (!!)
    > languages that already work, out of the box, on our
    > stock build.
    >
    > I'm incredibly thrilled about this, because it means
    > that the primary
    > remaining obstacles for users of those languages
    > are:
    >
    > - finishing the UI (and help) localizations,
    > - finding or creating suitable fonts,
    > - finding or creating suitable dictionaries,
    > - mastering the input mechanisms for that
    > language, and
    > - confirming that printing works.
    >
    > Note that three of these are "data issues". The
    > main coding obstacles would
    > be any remaining glitches in the I/O stuff (typing
    > and printing) ... and
    > that's what Bugzilla is for!
    >
    > Kudos to all the i18n coders -- Henrik, Vlad, HJ,
    > Tomas, Yaacov, Andrew, et
    > al -- whose excellent work to date is now paying
    > off!
    >
    > Paul
    >
    > PS: Remember, I made zero effort to:
    >
    > - locate other fonts, or
    > - try the BiDi build,
    >
    > so our "real" levels of support are probably even
    > higher. Anyone interested
    > in extending the Win32 test? If so, please update
    > the document
    > accordingly.

    =====
    http://linguaphile.sourceforge.net http://www.abisource.com

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