[ubuntu-in] Dapper Drake Telugu support review

[G. Naresh Kumar]

Hi,

I am working in the Telugu localization group. I have tested the Ubuntu 
Dapper Drake (Flight 5) for Telugu support. The following are my 
observations.



Installation Instructions in Telugu:

Telugu installation is not supported in Dapper Drake as of now. To 
enable telugu installaion the l10n-debian installer needs to be localized.

Comment: l10n-debian-installer localization has to be done.



Telugu in langauges menu during login:

During Login user is not given an option to select Telugu as the default 
desktop language. By default telugu is not included in the list of 
languages in the languages menu during login. To include telugu to this 
list, telugu language support has to be added. To add telugu support to 
the gnome desktop, go to System > administration > Language Support and 
add telugu support to the existing gnome. Now you can select Telugu from 
the languages menu in login screen and then you can see the gnome 
desktop in Telugu.

Comment: Depending on the Country chosen during installation, the 
relevant language support can be installed or during installation the 
user has to be given an option to enable his choice of languages whose 
support has to be added.



SCIM or IIIMF:

Telugu input in Dapper Drake can be made with SCIM. SCIM with inscript 
keyboard layout is provided for telugu input in Dapper Drake. Including 
RTS keyboard layout would have helped the user more.

Comment:
1. RTS layout has to be included into the m17n-lib of the SCIM.
2. SCIM input module is not enabled in the desktop by default. User has 
to change the input method to enable Telugu input. All gnome 
applications provide with a mechanism to do this. But non gnome 
applications like ooffice, firefox etc doesn't provide any mechanism to 
do that. User has to explicitly to start SCIM module through command 
prompt. So, SCIM module has to be enabled by default.



Procedure to enable telugu input in "gedit":

Even when the user logs in selecting Telugu as his language, default 
input language still remains to be English. User has to manually enable 
Telugu input in gedit. To enable telugu input in "gedit" SCIM input 
method has to be enabled. To enable, right click and select Input method 
and SCIM Input Method. And then the input language can be changed using 
"ctrl + space". To change this shortcut, go to System > Preferences > 
SCIM Input Method Setup

Comment: Only Inscript layout is provided. RTS layout would be of more 
help to the end user.


Test gedit rendering:

"gedit" telugu rendering is pretty good. :)



Desktop in Telugu:

Desktop in Telugu is good.

Comment: Localization of telugu desktop is not complete. A few elements 
are yet to be done.



Firefox Telugu rendering:

Initially Firefox didn't render Telugu text properly. Then I installed 
the  Telugu language pack from language support. Then Firefox rendered 
with pango but still was using FreeFont and the rendering was not 
proper. Then I set priority to the Pothana2000 font over FreeFont in 
/etc/fonts/local.conf which solved the problem. After doing this Firefox 
rendering was pretty good :)


glibc locale:

glibc locale is upto date.



ooffice font rendering and input:

A few rendering issues are found in ooffice. But this is not ubuntu 
specific problem.

Comment: Has to look into these rendering issues.


Regards,
Naresh