Re: Thai Numbering in gnome-doc-utils

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Shaun McCance wrote:

> 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?
>  
We would love to have Greek numerals supported!

However, the current locale support in CSS3 [1] appears to be quite 
suboptimal for Greek.
The Greek alphabetic numbering follows the legacy of Ancient Greek which 
adds three letter-numbers [2].
Specifically, it introduces three letters (for 6, 90, 900) that shift 
the letters to the right:
6, 90, 900
are represented by
Ï (in modern Greek: ÏÏ), Ï, Ï

According to [1], CSS3 does not take into account any of those 
characters and especially "ÏÏ".
Therefore, there is the issue of correctness for 6, 7, 8, and so on.

In addition, CSS3 is not good with the capitalisation (changing case) of 
Greek text, as there are specific rules that drop accents, and in some 
cases this depends on the context (based on the word).

It appears that when CSS3 was being drafted, there was no feedback for 
Greek :(

Therefore, it would be better for Greek not to use alphabetic numerals 
through CSS3 at this moment for issues of correctness.
For the record, I sent an e-mail to this CSS3 working group in case it 
is possible to fix the missing letters. Thanks for bringing the issue to 
my attention.

Simos

> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css3-lists-20021107/
>  
[2] http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/numerals.html