[A12n-forum] Re: [Fwd: Re: [lingu-dev] new functionality]

[Andrew Cunningham <andrewc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dwayne,

Dwayne Bailey wrote:
> We worked on xkb.  It has documentation but I needed a long time to
> understand what I needed to do.  IIIMF seems the way to go for new
> languages as I think this will replace xkb and friends on Linux.
Although SCIM is picking up a range of adherents on a number of linux 
distros. It would seem the mandrake camp have moved towards scim, the 
fedora crowd towards IIIMF and the Debian crowd tend to stick to xkb 
(except for CJK users).
I'm been experimenting with SCIM a little, but then i also need to 
support CJKV and South Asian languages as well as African languages.
The KMFL project seems to be promising since it will allow me to 
recompile my windows keyman keyboard layout source files to use with SCIM.
> You are right this is a real issue.  I have experienced the same issue.
> Its one of the reasons we started documenting our learnings at
> translate.sf.net/wiki.  Windows and Mac are easy because this level is
> controled by the vendor.  Which has positive and negative aspects
although my major concern at the moment are font rendering issues. The 
inability to display combining diacritics adequately on the linux 
platform. This is a show stopper for a range of african languages.
The current reality is that some African languages will have to use 
Windows XP SP2 or MacOS, at least until the font rendering barrier has 
been overcome on linux.
I'm using linux more and more at work, and are using graphite enabled 
versions of firefox, thunderbird and openoffice for testing purposes. 
Although its frustrating to be so restricted in the number of 
applications that I can use with the languages i'm dealing with.
> + Its standardised, one method, one place
> + The documentation is usually in the same place
> + Proprietary vendors usually (not always) have better documentation
> - You depend on the benevolence of the software vendor

unfortunately true.


Andrew

--
Andrew Cunningham
e-Diversity and Content Infrastructure Solutions
Public Libraries Unit, Vicnet
State Library of Victoria
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Melbourne  VIC  3000
Australia

andrewc+AEA-vicnet.net.au

Ph. 3-8664-7430
Fax: 3-9639-2175

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