A while back we have agreed on the list that it would be good to
provide font packs for non-Latin1 locales, to make it easier for
people to use AW, but nothing has materialised. I feel really
strongly that we need to do this, I am convinced that we are
already loosing potential users who are put off by having to make
their way through the Unix font mess. Certainly a set of font packs
for the most common locales is, I think, an absolute must before ve
release 1.0.
We should have at least iso-8859-2 and Russian font packs
available as soon as possible. The simplest way to do this is for
someone who uses that locale and has it properly set up simply to
make tgz file from the locale specific font subdirectory
(accompanied by a suitable readme file). I recall Vlad provided a
Russian pack a while back, but I do not think it made it to the AW
website. Is there anyone on the list who uses iso8859-2 and could
make a pack for that specific locale? Perhaps we need to ask on
the users list, I am sure there are people out there using other iso
locales as well.
Also the front page of the AW download site should contain clear
notice that the standard font pack included with Unix version of AW
is only suitable for iso8859-1, and a link to the location where
additional font packs can be found. This should be done straight
away, even without any font packs available at the moment; it will
make it possible to put the packs up as we get them, and also
warn people about the fact that there are locale specific issues with
AW on Unix (also the download site should encourage people to
contribute pack for locales not yet represented). Sam, would you
have time to make these changes to the website?
It might also be worth considering to pop out a warning message
box when AW is run under a locale other than iso-8859-1 and only
the standard fonts are found. I have got the feeling that many
ordinary users simple expect that since they have their Unix locale
properly set up, AW will work out of the box, especially since they
see all the menus localised into their language; well, that is
nowhere near the reality.
Tomas
