3 * http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ethiopian_Setup
4 * http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Amharic_language
8 To enable the Amharic Ethiopian locale, the /etc/sysconfig/i18n
15 To alleviate boot overhead with UTF-8 locales, we'd like to
16 move this setting to a later point in the boot process.
17 olpc-dm would be a good candidate.
19 AI: I'm going to make some tests and report back.
24 F7 glibc does not even boot when am_ET is enabled, but it's not
25 obvious why. Suffice to say that the output of ls comes out
26 sorted by strlen() when am_ET is enabled!!!
28 glibc-2.6 from F8 is ok, but I can't find an obvious patch to
29 backport. The only recent addition to the am_ET locale has
30 been to discard accents in string comparisons.
32 Moreover, the glibc-2.6 rpm post-install scriptlet fails silently
33 on jffs2, corrupting the locale archive. It happens because
34 the build-locale-archive tool tries to use a shared writable
35 file map which is not supported.
37 The glibc-2.6 rpm is available from OlpcBernieRepo.
39 * AI: Of course we don't want to upgrade to 2.6 at this time, so I'm asking the glibc hackers for insight.
41 * Bug here: http://sources.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5033
45 A good candidate that provides high-quality Ethiopian glyphs is the
46 Abyssinica-SIL.ttf, which is not packaged in Fedora.
48 I grabbed the TTF file from the Debian package ttf-sil-abyssinica-1.0
49 and temporarily installed it in /home/olpc/.fonts/
51 I'm not sure the font license is acceptable for Fedora or even us.
52 Someone with better understanding should check.
54 * AI: I could easily create an RPM once we decide this is the font we want to use.
57 == ET keyboard layout ==
59 The updated xkeyboard-config RPM shipped with latest builds
60 already contains the "et" keyboard layout.
62 This can set in xorg.conf, or loaded for testing like so:
65 setxkbmap -v -model olpc et
68 The "=" key is not working in current builds, but Sergey
69 has already fixed it upstream and we'll pick it up with
72 * AI: I'll send a new olpc patch upstream to resync
74 * AI: I'll update our RPM from a CVS snapshot of xkeyboard-config
79 Sergey's Compose file for am_ET is already upstream, and it
80 is required for XIM-baded composition to work in all applications.
82 I prepared an updated RPM and staged in OlpcBernieRepo.
84 Even with this new RPM installed, XIM does not appear to work in
85 Abiword and other utilities I tried.
87 Furthermore, the Compose works by pressing a vowel, followed
88 by a consonant, which seems to be a less convenient way
89 of producing glyphs (see below)
91 * AI: Sergey said he'll check if CONSONANT+VOWEL is possible with XIM.
96 GTK contains an Amharic input method which is currently outdated.
97 I'm in contact with the author, Daniel Yacob, who'll soon port
98 his latest patch to the current version of GTK.
99 This probably means we'll have to fork the gtk2 package too.
100 I'm unable to tell how important these changes would be for users.
102 Lidet Tilahun, a professor of Ethiopian at Harvard, tried typing
103 on the XO with this IM and confirmed that this would be the
104 preferred method. It's basically CONSONANT+VOWEL, with a way
105 to switch in a CONSONANT-only mode.
107 Additionally, it seems this IM requires the "us" keyboard.
108 I couldn't get it to work with the "et" keyboard loaded.
109 Daniel says it shouldn't happen.
111 * AI: waiting for a patch. Progress is being tracked here:
112 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101360
116 We couldn't get glyph composing to give correct visual
119 On F7, Abiword works fine, but it's an old version that still
120 used Xft directly. The version we use now switched to pango
121 and apparently regressed on this.
123 I asked uwog about it and he suggested me to file a bug
124 upstream. Without this fix, the IM is still usable, but
127 * AI: I will file the bug upstream.
130 == Other Gtk applications ==
132 I tried installing gedit on an XO, and I couldn't get
133 neither the Amharic, nor the XIM input methods to work
138 * AI: Needs investigation.
143 System stability appears to be somewhat compromised when all
144 the above changes are enabled.
146 I've seen activities crashing randomly and funny rendering
149 * AI: Before we even start filing bugs on this, I'd prefer to
150 see some of the above components land in the builds, otherwise
151 we might be chasing bugs that are even harder to reproduce.