CC Wordforge list (translate-pootle) Hi again Ed :)
I'm copying this to the Wordforge [1] list, because I think your projects could be related. They're currently creating an i18n infrastructure with Debian, and in general are working on co- operative localization tools. On 15/07/2006, at 1:51 AM, Ed Trager wrote: > > On 7/14/06, Clytie Siddall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> On 14/07/2006, at 7:07 AM, Nicolas Spalinger wrote: >> >> > Your font playground is definitely a great way to test complex >> input >> > methods directly from the web, to do test rendering of particular >> > glyphs >> > and even to compare and harmonize different styles. It would also >> > possibly be a great way to track the status of a open font in >> > development by serving up actual snapshots of the latest "nightly >> > build" >> > of a branch in a particular font project. >> >> This is a very good point, and would come in handy for Debian right >> now: there's a thread on debian-i18n about trying to organize review >> for fonts. Using Font Playground would simplify things, especially if >> it included some kind of feedback process: maybe a Comments thread >> for each snapshot? >> >> What do you think, Ed? Could it work, and if so, would it be viable >> in terms of the time you have available to spend on it? Or could >> someone else help with it? >> > > My initial response is that I should probably (1) first improve the > code and functionality a bit and then (2) Release the whole bundle so > that someone else who wants to use it or modify it can do so. Both good ideas. As I said, there's at least one major project interested in this sort of structure in localization tools, so making it available for modification will create more opportunities. > > Step (1) is going to be at least another couple of months I would > imagine, based on the very part-time way I've been working on it. > This is just one of many projects I'm working on. The usual problem: lack of effective time! ;) Probably, if one were asked to describe the typical free-software person who makes things happen (as opposed to a talker), one would mention a multiplicity of activities and efforts in remarkable little available time! > The software > "stack" currently looks like this: > > CLIENT > ------------------- > W3C DOM Browser : Firefox / Opera / (Safari (?) / Konqueror (?) worked fine on OmniWeb 5.5 testing and Camino, both of which use the same Webkit as Safari. > | > * FontPlayground's Javascript, XHTML, CSS display > | > * GladiatorComponents GUI & AJAX Toolkit > | > < AJAX Communication with server > choices > | > SERVER STACK > ------------------- > PHP Wrapper > | > Ghostscript Rasterizer > | > * FontPlayground C++ "typesetter" program > | > * LASi Unicode Postscript Library > | | > Pango <-> Freetype <-> FontConfig <- * FontConfig configuration nuts and bolts Fairly clear, and not cluttered. I think there's plenty of room for effective growth. Everything being free software helps a lot. > > Asterisks indicate areas that need further work or investigation. Also areas where work needed to be done, anyway. You really didn't have anything available simply to plug in. You're bridging some important gaps here. > I > won't bore you with details about what needs to be done in each area. It wouldn't bore me. Could you please put it up on a wiki or somewhere so people like Wordforge can refer to it? Like a roadmap? (The Pootle roadmap [2] would probably interest you.) > It is sufficient to note that while there are a lot of areas needing > more work, some areas need to be worked on more than others. But that also means there are lots of opportunities. Don't feel bad about that. You can't do everything, and you've opened the doors for other people. > The > typesetting program already has some 'smart" features when it sees > Arabic and Hebrew strings : That's a classic problem area, isn't it? ;) > One thing that I really want to do is to > make the typesetting program also have "smart" behaviour when it sees > Indic strings like Devanagari and Bengali. "smart" behaviour for any character sets requiring different setups > So that's one priority > which will happen very soon. A second priority is to figure out how > to make FontConfig not use "fallback" fonts so that one would always > see an empty square when a selected font did not have glyphs for > rendering certain characters. Yes, that would avoid people going "yuk" and assuming there is something wrong with the font. As you know, the reason I haven't updated the Vietnamese section of your essential Unicode Font Guide [3] is that, having found out that the Vietnamese font-designers I've discovered haven't licensed their fonts at all, I've been trying to work on the licence area first, so I can update the section with licensed fonts and current information. Unfortunately, my effort to create an unofficial translation of the OFL, like the unofficial translations of the GNU licences [4] doesn't seem to be going down too well with SIL, despite me consulting them about it originally and perisistently asking them for instructions. I'm the first person to try to create an unofficial translation of the OFL, so I suppose it can be more difficult. My team's OFL translation was created and reviewed some time ago, and SIL did supply a disclaimer to preface it, but currently they seem to be thinking I'm trying to create a legal translated font licence. I hope to have that cleared up soon, and thus to be able to re-publish the UNOFFICIAL translation of the OFL in Wikisource to raise awareness of this font licence in our community, so I can contact my font authors and encourage them to read it and decide on licensing. We get there in the end. ;) from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm Việt hóa phần mềm tự do) http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN [1] http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/ [2] http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/wordforge/ functional_specificaions [3] http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/ [4] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/translations.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? 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