Re: Translations, GNOME and KDE

[Ramanan Selvaratnam <rama uklinux net>]

On Fri, 2004-01-02 at 18:41, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
> Kenneth Rohde Christiansen wrote:

> > I am sure we can do more on the PR side. 

I agree. But not in relation to KDE alone. Just on the merits of what
Gnome is...

> > 
> > This could attract more users and more translators as well :-)
> > 
> 
> Hmm - a major advantage that GNOME had was the support for Indic 
> languages. QT 3.2 has support for rendering Indic scripts.

Yes Qt 3.2 really brought in silently some wonderful Indic Unicode
support.

>  However, the 
> input of Indic scripts seems to be somewhat wierd in QT (I was testing 
> QT 3.3.0b1).

Is there a Qt-IM?

> In the GNOME world, GTK-IM modules are really useful in some cases (I 
> helped someone implement a Bengali desktop system which had to be used 
> over VNC - and GTK-IM proved to be the most hassle free method of 
> handling the input)

I indirectly learnt that Sun's IIIMF support for Gnome will be merged
into  Gtk in the future. Is this correct? It will be nice for langs like
mine which are really struggling without proper IM related standards.
Infact Gnome could help usher in standards across the whole language
domain.

> On the other hand, gnome-print cannot print Indic languages, and that is 
> turning out to be a really bad show stopper

This is being fixed in a unified way I hope? 

>  - I was testing the KDE 3.2 
> printing system yesterday, and it printed all the Indic stuff properly.
Yes indeed.

But you missed something that is much more important web browser
support.
We all know apart from speed Konqueror using Qt brings uniformity.
What do we have for probably the biggest use of software on PCs
nowadays... the Gecko engine which does not use system's layout
capabilities. Gecko support for Indic complex text layout sucks.
So Epiphany for Tamil sucks.
Here lies the biggest defining difference for me between KDE and Qt.

I thought this will be the biggest winner eventually when Pango will be
used to shape complex text for Gecko but worryingly I learnt that this
is not for sure...

My language needs  a decent web browser on Gnome. 
At the moment I am trying to write help files for how to setup Konqueror
and WinXP based browsers (could anyone help please :) to view the
reference glossary that needs to be agreed for the high quality
translations. I have not got around to write up the 8 different IM
layouts and techniques yet.

Anyway the gist of the argument here (I hope) is that the long post in
UserLinux does not consider many real i18n issues.  

Best regards,
Ramanan