Re: Thai Numbering in gnome-doc-utils

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 00:42 +0000, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> Theppitak Karoonboonyanan wrote:
> 
> >Hello,
> >
> >I'm going to translate gnome-doc-utils into Thai and find
> >two required Thai numberings are missing. One is Thai alphabetical,
> >and the other is Thai decimal digits.
> >
> >Thai alphabetical numbering is run with Thai consonants in the range:
> >
> >  U+0E01 (THAI CHARACTER KO KAI)
> >    :
> >  U+0E2E (THAI CHARACTER HO NOKHUK)
> >
> >with three characters skipped, namely:
> >
> >  - U+0E03 (THAI CHARACTER KHO KHUAT)
> >  - U+0E05 (THAI CHARACTER KHO KHON)
> >  - U+0E06 (THAI CHARACTER KHO RAKHANG)
> >
> >(i.e. the sequence is: U+0E01, U+0E02, U+0E04, U+0E07 .. U+0E2E)
> >
> >This is mainly used for numbering appendixes in Thai
> >documents, and occasionally used in ordered lists.
> >
> >Numbering with Thai decimal digits is less used in general,
> >but exists  in most official or military documents. It just uses
> >Thai digits in the range (U+0E50..U+0E50) for 0..9 respectively.
> >
> >I'm not sure about digits bahavior described by W3C's XSLT,
> >nor what have been done in gnome-doc-utils, but let me mention
> >a common mistake in some implementations: the assumed translation
> >of digits. We would need an explicit way to specify whether to use
> >Thai digits in numbering, rather than automatically translated.
> >
> >Thank you for your attention. Any comment would be appreciated.
> >  
> >
> That's quite an interesting issue.
> I did not notice this information in the locale settings, nor in the
> documentation of gettext.
> Perhaps the linux-utf8 list is more appropriate for this?
> I am cc:ing there as well.

No, this issue is specific to gnome-doc-utils.  The numbering
systems have to be implemented in XSLT.  We won't get any help
from the rest of the system.

This is all discussed in the extensive translator documentation
in gnome-doc-utils.  The translator documentation explicitly
states which numbering systems are currently available, admits
that they're insufficient, and asks translators to contact the
developers about adding additional systems.  Theppitak did that,
and I've coded up support for five additional systems.

Translators, if you want documentation to look right in your
language, you need to tell me what's broken.  Gnome 2.12.0
includes official support for 43 languages.  I speak two of
them, and only one of those really well.

I've been looking at the numbering systems defined in CSS3 [1],
and I'll probably converge towards those.  But I need a clear
understanding of who needs which numbering systems.  At least
one of the systems I've been asked to implement isn't on the
CSS3 list, so I can't rely on W3C for everything.

So that said, Simos, do you need Greek alphabetic numbering
to be supported by gnome-doc-utils?

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css3-lists-20021107/

--
Shaun