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 * TODO: I'm going to make some tests and report back.
20 * DONE: LANG=C in /etc/sysconfig/i18n, LANG=am_ET.UTF-8 later on
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 * TODO: Of course we don't want to upgrade to 2.6 at this time, so I'm asking the glibc hackers for insight.
40 * FIXME: http://sources.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5033
44 A good candidate that provides high-quality Ethiopian glyphs is the
45 Abyssinica-SIL.ttf, which is not packaged in Fedora.
47 I grabbed the TTF file from the Debian package ttf-sil-abyssinica-1.0
48 and temporarily installed it in /home/olpc/.fonts/
50 I'm not sure the font license is acceptable for Fedora or even us.
51 Someone with better understanding should check.
53 * TODO: I could easily create an RPM once we decide this is the font we want to use.
56 == ET keyboard layout ==
58 The updated xkeyboard-config RPM shipped with latest builds
59 already contains the "et" keyboard layout.
61 This can set in xorg.conf, or loaded for testing like so:
64 setxkbmap -v -model olpc et
67 The "=" key is not working in current builds, but Sergey
68 has already fixed it upstream and we'll pick it up with
71 * TODO: I'll send a new olpc patch upstream to resync (DONE)
72 * TODO: I'll update our RPM from a CVS snapshot of xkeyboard-config
73 * FIXME: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12202
77 Sergey's Compose file for am_ET is already upstream, and it
78 is required for XIM-baded composition to work in all applications.
80 I prepared an updated RPM and staged in OlpcBernieRepo.
82 Even with this new RPM installed, XIM does not appear to work in
83 Abiword and other utilities I tried.
85 Furthermore, the Compose works by pressing a vowel, followed
86 by a consonant, which seems to be a less convenient way
87 of producing glyphs (see below)
89 * TODO: Sergey said he'll check if CONSONANT+VOWEL is possible with XIM.
94 GTK contains an Amharic input method which is currently outdated.
95 I'm in contact with the author, Daniel Yacob, who'll soon port
96 his latest patch to the current version of GTK.
97 This probably means we'll have to fork the gtk2 package too.
98 I'm unable to tell how important these changes would be for users.
100 Lidet Tilahun, a professor of Ethiopian at Harvard, tried typing
101 on the XO with this IM and confirmed that this would be the
102 preferred method. It's basically CONSONANT+VOWEL, with a way
103 to switch in a CONSONANT-only mode.
105 Additionally, it seems this IM requires the "us" keyboard.
106 I couldn't get it to work with the "et" keyboard loaded.
107 Daniel says it shouldn't happen.
109 * TODO: waiting for a patch. Progress is being tracked here:
110 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101360
114 We couldn't get glyph composing to give correct visual
117 On F7, Abiword works fine, but it's an old version that still
118 used Xft directly. The version we use now switched to pango
119 and apparently regressed on this.
121 I asked uwog about it and he suggested me to file a bug
122 upstream. Without this fix, the IM is still usable, but
125 * TODO: I will file the bug upstream.
126 * FIXME: http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11190
129 == Other Gtk applications ==
131 I tried installing gedit on an XO, and I couldn't get neither the
132 Amharic, nor the XIM input methods to work with it.
136 * TODO: Needs investigation.
141 System stability appears to be somewhat compromised when all
142 the above changes are enabled.
144 I've seen activities crashing randomly and funny rendering
147 * TODO: Before we even start filing bugs on this, I'd prefer to
148 see some of the above components land in the builds, otherwise
149 we might be chasing bugs that are even harder to reproduce.