I18N/Meetings/2007-08-14

I18N Session at FUDConF8 2007-08-14 Minutes

Special meeting as part of FUDConF8 :

• 2007-08-14 2300-2400 UTC on #fudcon at Freenode

Agenda

• Status update on im-chooser and scim for F8 -- JensPetersen, AkiraTagoh
• CIJK fonts-* renaming (continued) -- JensPetersen
• License field updating for i18n packages (reminder) -- JensPetersen
• Open Discussion
• Onscreen keyboard (matchbox-keyboard support for m17n?) -- JensPetersen

Log

23:01:01 <juhp>	ok it is now after 23:00 UTC
23:01:27 <juhp>	Welcome to the i18n session here at the virtual fudcon :-)
23:02:34 *	juhp feels a little awed with some many people :)
23:03:31 <dgilmore>	gday juhp
23:03:37 *	fabian_a has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
23:03:43 *	tagoh3 listens
23:03:52 <juhp>	when planning this session wasn't quite sure how to position it - it will probably a bit of a mixture of status report, discussion and Q&A
23:04:00 <juhp>	hey tagoh3 :)
23:04:15 <juhp>	http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N/Meetings
23:04:31 <juhp>	hi dgilmore
23:04:41 *	dgilmore is listening in
23:05:04 *	G_ has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
23:05:22 <juhp>	so we have various topics to talk about and time for some open discussion too I think
23:07:03 <juhp>	just wanted to add that we timed this talk to make it possible for people in the US to join in too
23:07:34 <juhp>	but it is actually a holiday today in Brisbane and Pune too, so not sure how many redhat i18n people will be here
23:07:43 <juhp>	anyway let's started:
23:07:59 <juhp>	# Status update on im-chooser and scim for F8 -- JensPetersen, AkiraTagoh
23:08:09 *	rnorwood (i=rnorwood@nat/redhat/x-8992b792a59c9718) has joined #fudcon
23:08:49 <dgilmore>	stupid ekka
23:08:51 <juhp>	so for F8 tagoh3 is doing so work on im-chooser to improve the UI to make it more intuitive
23:08:55 <juhp>	dgilmore: heh
23:09:53 <juhp>	dgilmore: I had actually forgotten about it, and thought better not to have the i18n session at the very end of the fudcon ;)
23:10:11 <dgilmore>	im-chooser lets you pick non latin based languages right?
23:11:25 <juhp>	also I am hoping at the same time to change the scim install defaults back
23:11:38 <tagoh3>	dgilmore: basically yes. but it depends on what the kind of languages are available in IM
23:12:29 <juhp>	so that scim is no longer installed by default (done) but starts (for most users) by default if IM engines are installed (mostly done for scim but not built yet)
23:13:01 *	EvilBob has quit (Remote closed the connection)
23:13:25 <juhp>	dgilmore: right, it is a small tool to turn IM (input methods) on or off (and choose between them if you have more than one installed)
23:14:06 *	fabian_a (n=Fabian@84-75-195-242.dclient.hispeed.ch) has joined #fudcon
23:14:53 <juhp>	so I think IM default should be much better in F8 than they were in F7, where core scim packages got installed for everyone unfortunately
23:15:21 <juhp>	tagoh3: do you want to say anything about the im-chooser stuff? :)
23:15:40 <tagoh3>	sure.
23:15:59 *	jortel-lt has quit (Remote closed the connection)
23:16:15 *	juhp doesn't have the url to the wikipage around
23:16:40 <tagoh3>	on F8, im-chooser just got a trivial fix not to get confused in words. for next step, as juhp said, I'm planning to have further UI improvements on im-chooser
23:16:49 <tagoh3>	http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AkiraTagoh/IMChooser/UIImprovements
23:16:51 <jeremy>	juhp: there's no way that you're going to get to where scim isn't installed by default for a substantial percentage of users
23:17:04 <tagoh3>	here is a mockup for next im-chooser.
23:17:20 <juhp>	tagoh3: thanks
23:17:22 <jeremy>	juhp: live cds are a *huge* chunk of our users.  unless you're saying that we just abandon scim on the live image (which I think is kind of silly...), most of our users are going to be getting it
23:18:12 <juhp>	jeremy: yep, that is true - I was thinking more about non-livecd users
23:18:29 <jeremy>	juhp: we should just install it everywhere and make sure the user experience doesn't suck with it installed
23:18:46 <jeremy>	because if the user experience sucks with it installed, we've lost.  if it's good with it installed, then we should just always have it available to make it more discoverable
23:19:03 <juhp>	jeremy: but i have a mechanism in the scim xinputrc file to avoid when no IMEs are installed
23:19:35 <juhp>	jeremy: are there really so many livecd uesrs?
23:19:38 <jeremy>	juhp: yes
23:19:45 <dgilmore>	jeremy: i think thats the right way to go also
23:20:04 <juhp>	jeremy: do we have some stats for livecd users? :)
23:20:39 <|DrJef|>	juhp, we've got livecd downloads from the torrent i think
23:20:42 <jeremy>	juhp: a quick look at the torrent stats is that roughly 25% of the downloads via torrent are one of the liveimages
23:21:16 <juhp>	jeremy: well on non-livecd no scim IMEs are installed - so there really is no point to install the core scim packages there - I agree it is a completely different story for live
23:21:29 <juhp>	(installed typically)
23:22:08 <jeremy>	juhp: there's a good argument for actually installing language support by default across the board
23:22:37 <juhp>	jeremy: so install all scim and fonts for all users? :)
23:22:44 <jeremy>	yep
23:22:49 <juhp>	aha
23:23:02 <tagoh3>	fun
23:23:10 *	juhp is glad we're finally having this discussion :)
23:24:00 <juhp>	ok that is good input and feedback - I guess we will have to go away and think things through a bit more
23:24:22 <|DrJef|>	jeremy, that's it we all learn esperanto and officially only support it
23:24:23 <jeremy>	not likely to happen for Fedora 8, but I think there's a really strong chance of it for Fedora 9.  but even if not, the live images are only going to become more used and more popular.  and we definitely do it there
23:24:31 <juhp>	jeremy: I still feel that installing all oo.o langpacks etc for all users is a bit overkill
23:24:33 <jeremy>	|DrJef|: heh
23:24:50 *	EvilBob (n=bob@fedora/pdpc.sustaining.BobJensen) has joined #FUDcon
23:25:23 <|DrJef|>	jeremy, extensive language support makes livecd's..really really cramped
23:25:36 <juhp>	|DrJef|: true
23:25:44 <jeremy>	|DrJef|: you don't have a bluray drive yet?
23:26:09 <juhp>	jeremy: chance of installing all lang support you mean?
23:26:29 <juhp>	ah esperanto?  hehe
23:26:48 *	corbet (n=user@vc7-1-72.dsl.netrack.net) has left #fudcon ("ERC Version 5.1 (CVS) $Revision: 1.796 $ (IRC client for Emacs)")
23:28:14 <juhp>	ok maybe we should move to the next topic
23:28:32 <juhp>	unless there are any more comments on that?
23:29:21 <juhp>	# CIJK fonts package renaming (continued) -- JensPetersen
23:30:06 <juhp>	so in our last meeting we started talking about renaming/splitting the generically named fonts-* packages
23:30:54 <juhp>	and i was going to post about that on the mailing lists and file some bugs related to it
23:31:13 <juhp>	but didn't get round to it yet actually :-/
23:32:28 <juhp>	however we have been doing so work on fonts-chinese recently and I started realising this it is not so trivial work
23:32:35 <dgilmore>	juhp: whats that entail?
23:33:53 <juhp>	dgilmore: ok so currently we ship packages like fonts-{chinese,japanese,korean} which contain a mixture of upstreams/packages
23:34:26 *	MondayMorning has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
23:34:47 <dgilmore>	so you were going to do one srpm per tarball?
23:34:48 <juhp>	so the goal is really two-fold: to have packages which reflect the upstream names of the fonts and also to separate the sources if possible
23:35:11 <tagoh3>	juhp: probably it's not the case here so that there are no reasons to keep the place to be installed. so it shouldn't be a problem for splitting
23:35:22 <juhp>	dgilmore: well ideally - unless they are like parallel releases
23:35:32 *	dbewley has quit (Client Quit)
23:35:43 <dgilmore>	would you then do something like a fonts-japanese meta package that pulls in all the sub packages?
23:35:52 <juhp>	tagoh3: yeah that is true - moving the fonts to separate dirs should help a lot :)
23:36:01 <juhp>	dgilmore: yes I think so
23:36:44 <juhp>	tagoh3: I guess if we're going to proceed now, we really need to do it before test2 :)
23:37:04 <juhp>	I should start filing those bugs...
23:37:16 <tagoh3>	yep
23:37:41 <juhp>	okay that sounds good then
23:38:11 <juhp>	I'll try to do that this week then
23:40:02 <tagoh3>	not sure if I should bring this up here so that I don't really spend too much time for deprecated stuff... how about the usability issue on the bitmap fonts? particularly it's hard to have a suitable aliases after splitting
23:41:23 <juhp>	tagoh3: yes that is a good point
23:42:01 <juhp>	tagoh3: so is it better to keep the bitmap fonts together after splitting?
23:42:03 <tagoh3>	I don't know how much applications still depends on X core font though, I still need it as long as I use emacs :)
23:42:14 <tagoh3>	juhp: I think so
23:42:14 <juhp>	tagoh3: or doing it in a meta package?
23:42:15 *	steved (n=steved@4dicksons.org) has left #fudcon ("Leaving")
23:42:28 <juhp>	right ;-)
23:42:41 <juhp>	ok
23:43:48 <juhp>	# License field updating for i18n packages (reminder)
23:44:45 <juhp>	ok, this is just really a reminder for contributors maintaining i18n packages (reading this log say;) that they need review the licenses of the code of their packages and update the License field of the packages appropriately
23:46:31 *	jelyfish (n=jelyfish@cblmdm72-241-80-44.buckeyecom.net) has left #fudcon ("Konversation terminated!")
23:46:54 <|DrJef|>	jeremy, no blueray drive here. i don't have enough credit to get the finances to buy a ps3
23:47:47 <juhp>	if there are no questions or concerns about it, let's move into the discussion
23:48:03 <juhp>	# Open Discussion
23:48:46 <juhp>	does anyone have any questions or topics related to Fedora i18n to talk about?
23:49:45 <paragn>	juhp, I do have one thing to discuss
23:49:51 <juhp>	paragn: sure
23:50:06 <paragn>	this is related with packaging of newer fonts
23:50:11 <juhp>	aha
23:50:55 <paragn>	I think we should have some SPEC template on Fedora wiki for newer contributors who want to package new fonts
23:51:30 <juhp>	ok that might be useful
23:51:53 <juhp>	paragn: so something more detailed than just the current script snippet?
23:52:48 <tagoh3>	packaging guidelines for font would be good?
23:53:11 <juhp>	I agree it would be good to have more documentation for packaging fonts, since it is a bit tricky sometimes
23:53:12 <dgilmore>	paragn: perhaps come up with one and get it into rpmdevtools
23:53:14 <juhp>	tagoh3: yes
23:53:17 <paragn>	tagoh3, yes
23:53:35 <paragn>	dgilmore, sure will work on it
23:53:36 <juhp>	specially bitmap fonts
23:53:44 <juhp>	paragn: great
23:54:28 <dgilmore>	juhp: so  other than input issues what does the i18n team at RH do?
23:54:57 <dgilmore>	juhp: what kind of things are you guys doing to get more community involvement in the i18n process?
23:55:03 <juhp>	dgilmore: well the other big thing is rendering, ie display of international langs
23:55:56 *	dgilmore being accustomed to aussie input is not totally aware of what factors face people out there
23:56:09 <glezos>	juhp, do you think it's a good idea to consider adding "infrastructure support for the localization project" another goal for the i18n group?
23:56:37 <juhp>	dgilmore: eg pango support for indic scripts and display in different applications for example
23:56:55 <dgilmore>	juhp: indic == indian?
23:57:03 <juhp>	glezos: hmm interesting idea
23:57:05 <juhp>	dgilmore: yes
23:57:46 <dgilmore>	juhp: where do you guys develop your software?  inhouse or upstream?
23:57:59 <juhp>	glezos: how do you think we can help?
23:58:16 <juhp>	dgilmore: mostly contributions to upstream
23:58:23 <glezos>	juhp, I'm asking because AFAIK this is how other big projects work, and the L10n group in general is not very technically savvy (not to mention that they spend their time in what they are good at: translating)
23:58:53 <juhp>	glezos: right that is true :)
23:59:04 *	dgilmore would like to see a community built around i18n like localisation
23:59:19 <glezos>	juhp, hm.. maybe slowly consider maintaining our tools like the website and transifex
23:59:24 <dgilmore>	it seems to me as an outsider that i18n is mostly done by RH people
23:59:35 <dgilmore>	juhp: cool
23:59:40 *	dgilmore needs to run
23:59:48 <dgilmore>	juhp: thanks i learnt some things
23:59:51 <glezos>	dgilmore, we could make the project 10x more active if we could get more community involvement
00:00:05 <juhp>	glezos: well in principle we would be willing to help - I just it is just a question of resources and time :)
00:00:45 <glezos>	juhp, agreed -- and that's where the community could help a lot
00:01:03 <paragn>	dgilmore, glezos for Indic I18n we already have Lohit project where community is free to contribute
00:01:07 <paragn>	https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Lohit
00:01:59 <glezos>	juhp, I'd feel very, very confident if I knew that Fedora's i18n team could be helping out in (maintaining?) Transifex for example.
00:02:45 <glezos>	juhp, maybe we could put it as a goal and regular meeting topic on how to bring the two projects closer together.
00:02:51 <juhp>	glezos: let's talk more about it :) - until now we haven't had much involvement - I can try to talk to some of the RH l10n people to see if they are interested too
00:03:30 <juhp>	glezos: yes that sounds like a good idea
00:03:32 <glezos>	juhp, the gnome-i18n team is a great example
00:03:39 <glezos>	maybe we could see how they interact with the l10n community
00:03:59 <juhp>	dgilmore: agree completely - would like to see more community involvement in i18n
00:04:14 <juhp>	dgilmore: ah - see you!
00:05:01 <glezos>	juhp, I'm sure these meetings help a lot in this respect (opening up procedures, letting more people contribute)
00:05:28 <juhp>	well to try to answer your question anyway: so we started recently having open meetings on irc and getting a few more people involved in packaging etc, but it is hard work :)
00:05:38 <juhp>	glezos: yup - they do
00:05:42 <juhp>	:-)
00:06:52 <juhp>	maybe I can just briefly mention a couple of other things we are/have been doing recently
00:07:40 <juhp>	paragn is doing some work to document m17n maps for Indic input - which should be appearing on the fedoraproject wiki soon :)
00:08:11 <paragn>	yup they will be on wiki by this week end :)
00:08:32 <juhp>	and huzheng in Beijing just released stardict 3.0 this week, which has a lot of cool new features including support for net dictionaries/translation :-)
00:08:37 <juhp>	paragn: cool :)
00:08:52 <juhp>	well we are over time now...
00:09:08 <juhp>	anyone have anything else to ask or talk about?
00:09:33 <|DrJef|>	juhp, your the last session for today.. if you want to keep using teh channel you can
00:09:47 <juhp>	:)
00:10:31 <juhp>	oh I mentioned something about matchbox-keyboard in the agenda
00:12:32 <juhp>	I was playing with it yesterday and it looks quite nice - though it needs more configurability and i18n support
00:13:18 <juhp>	onscreen keyboard is important for India and other areas where many users are not comfortable with using a conventional keyboard
00:13:51 <juhp>	it would be interesting to integrate it better with scim and/or m17n
00:14:03 <paragn>	yes
00:14:54 <tagoh3>	juhp: how's it better comparing with the existing onscreen keyboard apps?
00:15:29 <juhp>	tagoh3: hmm good question - well I am not sure - I haven't tried that many
00:15:58 <tagoh3>	aha
00:16:03 <juhp>	at least for most users it seems more usable than gok say
00:16:24 <juhp>	tagoh3: do you have any good ones in mind? :)
00:17:38 <tagoh3>	juhp: no, not particular. I'm just interested in the feature differences.
00:17:44 <juhp>	right
00:18:43 <juhp>	anyway if anyone is interested i put srpms up at http://petersen.fedorapeople.org/matchbox/
00:19:03 <juhp>	I will probably submit them to fedora later...
00:19:30 <juhp>	okay well maybe that is enough for today :)
00:20:04 <juhp>	thanks to everyone who could join us and for contributing to the discussion :-)
00:21:01 <juhp>	appreciate that
00:21:06 <paragn>	juhp, thanks
00:21:25 <juhp>	ok - let's close the session here