[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Asian language support?

[From: xun.chen at nokia.com]

Hi,

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> From: Aaron Kavlie <akavlie at fusemail.com>
> Subject: [maemo-developers] Asian language support?
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> I am not a developer personally, but I would like to see if anyone  
> has plans to do some work in this area.  I am specifically 
> interested  
> in Japanese.
> 
> This is a complicated problem of course, and Linux has traditionally  
> been weak in this area unfortunately, compared to Windows & Mac OS.   
> My concerns fall into the following two categories:
> 
> 1. Display - I would hope the proper fonts would be included for  
> display of any language in web pages and other areas.  If 
> not, then I  
> imagine this would be easy to fix by downloading the appropriate  
> fonts.  Most any modern desktop operating system has good support  
> here, though some programs and protocols (for example, AOL Instant  
> Messenger) still suffer.

Some Chinese fonts (like GB2312/GBK [ISO 10646 1:1993] or GB18030 [ISO 10646 1:2000]) could be in next product as planed. The challenge is on RAM/Flash consumption as Asian fonts eat more memory. 

Maemo developers are able to add any fonts as they want. The font rendering pipeline xft/truetype/fontconfigure/pango is inside SDK, one just needs to 'fc-cache' the new font.

BTW, do you know any good quality Japanese fonts available from OSS or commercial vendors? Good quality means not only the good aesthetic looking, but also the less memory, especially RAM consumption, and quicker rendering. 

> 2. Input - This is where it gets tricky.  For Japanese, the commonly  
> used method on a desktop computer is to input roman 
> characters, which  
> are automatically converted to the appropriate hiragana as a first  
> step (i.e. "ka" is a single character), then as a second 
> step, to the appropriate katakana/kanji through some sophisticated context  
> analysis.  The only user-friendly solution to this that I know of on  
> Linux is im-ja (http://im-ja.sourceforge.net).  Being gtk-2 based,  
> this may be easy to port.

You are right, it is tricky to input Japanese or some thing like that. We 'planned' to put Chinese input methods (VKB/HWR) in next product. Like Japanese, Chinese input needs, so called, 'pre-edit' area to convert Latin letters to kanji, also some candidate list is needed. They become more difficult, if there is no hardware keyboard.

As you may notice, there is a IMF (Input Methods Framework) available in Maemo, that provides a mechanism to communicate between IM and client applications. IMF is NOT using XIM, but some other 'im' modules we created; which is essential when inputting Japanese or Chinese.

> Of course, this is not so ideal for a handheld such as the Nokia,  
> which is optimized for handwriting recognition.  The best (and  
> really, only) solution I have used here is Decuma Japanese, which  
> comes installed on Japanese Sony Clies.  It recognizes handwritten  
> kana & kanji, and does a fantastic job of it.  

We knew the advantage of Decuma that has been bought by Zi Corp last year. The key of the HWR is relying on HWR engine, the algorithm to convert handwrite trace to text encoding. Unfortunately, there is no such engine is available from OSS yet, NOT even with non-product quality.

We will put some kind of HWR GUI/IMF to Maemo when we are ready to do so. That will leave an empty HWR engine inside. I hope some OSS efforts will emerge to fill the hole afterwards.

> But this is also a  
> closed-source Palm-only solution.  There is also a similar input  
> method for the Sharp Zaurus, which is Linux-based, but I am not  
> familiar with the details of it; the best I could find in a quick  
> Google search is here: http://zaurus.biojapan.de/crim/ 
> SL5500_CRIM.html.  It is open-source, but would not be very port- 
> friendly I imagine.

If those OSS IM are used, the challenge will be how to coorprate with Maemo UI style, to manage the IAC (Inter Application Communication). The current solution can be seen in IMF.

> There is also the issue of interface localization, but this is not  
> important for my purposes, and even for native speakers it 
> would fall  
> behind the above mentioned concerns in order of importance.

Yes, those are minor things, technically, maybe a big deal as working efforts.

Br,
Xun Chen
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