Re: [indic] Re: Lack of Complex script rendering support on Android

On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Christopher Fynn <chris.fynn_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> We can probably all do things to get our own phones to work - but what
> is needed is that if *any* person buys *any* Android phone in India it
> "just works" with Indic scripts (even i the UI is not localized into
> all regional languages)
>
> I don't think it is an unreasonable expectation for consumers in these
> countries   when they shell out a lot of money for the latest phone to
> be able to send and receive messages in their script. .

Hear hear.

> Another problem is that reviews of phones, even those published or
> broadcast in India, rarely mention whether the phone supports Indic
> scripts - so it is difficult for a consumer to take this into account
> when deciding which phone to buy.

Actually as I told you already some ways are available for installing
Indic script support in sufficiently capable Android devices even
without builtin support. (I wonder why Shivakumar hasn't pitched in on
this thread despite my repeatedly cc-ing him.)

I think the manufacturers are slow at this because only now Android
has been catching up in India. I see the HTC Explorer support for
Indic as a good sign that future phones in India will be more likely
to have this feature.

However, one problem is that a large number of the technically savvy
people here (who would be the ones to specifically buy an Android
phone given the cost) do NOT know to read/write their native
languages/scripts. (Yes that is shocking but true.) So the demand will
grow only slowly I think.

> A lot of consumers just expect it to
> be there, since even much cheaper phones have offered this for years,.

I'm really not sure this is true. See above.

> I hope the latest Windows 7 phones don't have this limitation when we
> start to see them.

I had better not make comments on this! ;) Go Android where I can hack
the internals! ;)

-- 
Shriramana Sharma