Re: pango and gucharmap

[Simos Xenitellis <simos lists googlemail com>]

Christian Persch wrote:
> Hi;
>
> the new strings would be these unicode script and block names:
>
>   
> >  +msgid "Sundanese"
> >  +msgid "Lepcha"
> >  +msgid "Ol Chiki"
> >  +msgid "Cyrillic Extended-A"
> >  +msgid "Vai"
> >  +msgid "Cyrillic Extended-B"
> >  +msgid "Saurashtra"
> >  +msgid "Kayah Li"
> >  +msgid "Rejang"
> >  +msgid "Cham"
> >  +msgid "Ancient Symbols"
> >  +msgid "Phaistos Disc"
> >  +msgid "Lycian"
> >  +msgid "Carian"
> >  +msgid "Lydian"
> >  +msgid "Mahjong Tiles"
> >  +msgid "Domino Tiles"
> >     
Thanks. I'ld like to add here some q n a.

Q. What's the effect if these scripts are included but happen to remain 
untranslated in many of the languages?
A. When the user starts up Character Map, she is likely to see these 
script names in the
Script list. This is due to sorting, english letters appear on top of 
other scripts such as Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, etc. From the above list, 
it's going to be about a dozen entries.

Q. What's the effect if these scripts are not included in gucharmap?
A. If the user installs any of the updated fonts, she will not be able 
to view any of the new characters. This would be a defect, for about 60% 
of the users (using en_US locale, source: smolt)

Q. Anyway, are there fonts available for these new Unicode scripts?
A. For the Ancient Greek-era scripts, there are
http://*greek**fonts*.teilar.gr/  Covers five of the new Unicode blocks.

At the same place, there are fonts for things like Mahjong and Domino 
tiles, at least seven blocks in total.
These fonts have not been packaged yet, so a user would need to install 
by hand.

DejaVu will release a new scheduled version with some of the new 
characters (for example, characters in the Basic Greek block).

I suspect there are other fonts in preparation.

Personally, I would like the new scripts be included, even considering 
the fact they will eventually remain untranslated for some languages, in 
GNOME 2.22.1. My reason is the issue of correctness, to be able to view 
characters for these new fonts.

Simos