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Re: Yoruba and Hausa language support



> Language codes for both are ISO-639-3?. Yoruba seems do be "latin-based
> with three addidional characters" and should be Webbook(whatever this
> is), a sample alphabet can be found here[4]. Hausa[5], even worse, "has
> both a standardized Romanized (Latin) and an Arabic orthography." and
> "Webbook, with modifications". aargh .. help!
> 
> So, where I can't find suitable fonts in Debian? :-)
> 
> [4] http://www.omniglot.com/writing/yoruba.htm
> [5] http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hausa.htm
> 
> 
> Further, a apt-cache search on ISO-639 gave me iso-codecs:
> _._. .._ _  .... . ._. .  __..__  _._. .._ _  .... . ._. .
> Description: ISO language, territory, currency  codes and their
> translations
>  This package provides the ISO-639 Language code list, the
>  ISO-4217 currency list, the ISO-3166 Territory code list,
>  and ISO-3166-2 sub-territory lists.
>  .
>  It also (more importantly) provides their translations in .po form.
> _._. .._ _  .... . ._. .  __..__  _._. .._ _  .... . ._. .
> 
> If I get this right, this will be sufficient for console usage?
> Something like LANG=??_yo.ISO-639-? and ??_ha.ISO-639-? resp.
> dpkg-recofigure locales? 


Not exactly. For both languages to be supported in applications, you
first need a locale file for them. 

Writing a locale file needs the knowledge of:

-writing locale files..:-)
-the language
-the country (a locale is a combination of parameters for a language
and a country)

The iso-codes package you mentioned will not help. It is just a list
of ISO standards about language names (ISO-639), country names
(ISO-3166) and currency names (ISO-4217). The package provides
translations of these information in many languages, but that's all.

Yoruba has a ISO-639_2 code: "yo"

Hausa has "ha"

So the first locales should be yo_NG for "Yoruba/Nigeria" and ha_NG
for "Hausa/Nigeria".

To learn about locale files, you can have a look at files in
/usr/share/i18n/locales.

Fonts indeed come way after this....:)




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