Re: OS X Georgian

From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Wed Jul 11 2007 - 13:04:31 CDT

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    On 11 Jul 2007, at 19:11, Aiet Kolkhi wrote

    > For proper basic Georgian support, it would be nice if the operating
    > system or the external language package came with the following:
    >
    > 1. The Georgian-QWERTY keyboard layout, which is by far the most
    > popular keyboard layout used by more than 95% of Georgian users.
    >
    > - The package in question includes basic Georgian-QWERTY keyboard
    > layout, but unlike Georgian-QWERTY layouts available on other
    > operating systems, it does not include Georgian quotation marks, some
    > important special characters, the Georgian characters added in recent
    > versions of Unicode (Fi, Yn, Elifi, Turned Gan and Ain) etc.
    >
    > Here is the description of the QWERTY layout which includes all the
    > characters mentioned above:
    > http://www.gakartuleba.org/layouts/index.php
    >
    > 2. Georgian Ergonomic - the new Georgian ergonomic, dvorak-like layout
    > created by Georgia IT Department, TK-18 Group and other experts.
    >
    > 3. Georgian MESS keyboard layout - Georgian Ministry of Education and
    > Science Schools layout used in all Georgian schools.

    Keyboard layouts can be created using Ukelele <http://scripts.sil.org/
    ukelele>.

    > 4. At least one Georgian scalable typeface, but preferably one
    > Serif-style, one sans-serif style and one fixed-width courier-style
    > font. There are some Georgian typefaces that are professionally
    > hinted, open-source and are easily licensable to Apple Inc. for
    > Georgian support.
    >
    > In comparison, the Georgian Language package for OS X in question
    > contains only one font (Zuzumbo.dfont) which is very nice font but
    > since it is not an OpenType font or due to some other reasons, is not
    > sufficient for system-wide display of Georgian texts. As a result,
    > some Georgian localized software, like Opera Browser, display squares
    > instead of Georgian text.

    Lists of Unicode fonts:
       http://www.wazu.jp/index.html
       http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html

    > 5. Proper Georgian locale, which would include regular locale
    > information about currency, date, time and numbers formats, collation
    > rules, timezone and other important language and cuntry-specific data.

    As for the GUI (Aqua), several can be set from System Preferences ->
    International -> Formats, and -> Date & Time -> Time Zone, excluding
    collation and "other important language and country-specific data"

    As for the underlying UNIX, many programs do not work with
    en_US.UTF-8 even, so having it does not help much. Perhaps this will
    improve with Max OS X 10.5, which is certified UNIX.

       Hans Åberg



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