Documentation I18n Beat

International Language Support

This section includes information on language support under Fedora.

• Localization (translation) of Fedora is coordinated by the Fedora Localization Project -- http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N
• Internationalization of Fedora is maintained by the Fedora Internationalization Project -- http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N

Language Coverage

Fedora features a variety of software that is translated in many languages. For a list of languages refer to the translation statistics for the Anaconda module, which is one of the core software applications in Fedora.

• http://translate.fedoraproject.org/languages
• http://translate.fedoraproject.org/module/anaconda

Language Support Installation

To install langpacks and additional language support from the Languages group, run this command:

su -c 'yum groupinstall <language>-support'

In the command above, <language> is one of assamese, bengali, chinese, gujarati, hindi, japanese, kannada, korean, malayalam, marathi, oriya, punjabi, sinhala, tamil, telegu, thai, and so on.

SCIM users upgrading from earlier releases of Fedora are strongly urged to install scim-bridge-gtk, which works well with third-party C++ applications linked against older versions of libstdc++.

Transifex

Transifex is Fedora's online tool to facilitate contributing translations to projects hosted on remote and disparate version control systems. Many of the core packages use Transifex to receive translations from numerous contributors.

http://transifex.org

Through a combination of new web tools, community growth, and better processes, translators can contribute directly to any upstream project through one translator-oriented web interface. Developers of projects with no existing translation community can easily reach out to Fedora's established community for translations. In turn, translators can reach out to numerous projects related to Fedora to easily contribute translations.

https://translate.fedoraproject.org/submit

Fonts

Fonts for most languages are installed by default on the desktop to give good default language coverage.

Default Language for Han Unification

When not using an Asian locale in GTK-based applications, Chinese characters (that is, Chinese Hanzi, Japanese Kanji, or Korean Hanja) may render with a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts depending on the text. This happens when Pango does not have sufficient context to know which language is being used. The current default font configuration seems to prefer Chinese fonts. If you normally want to use Japanese or Korean say, you can tell Pango to use it by default by setting the PANGO_LANGUAGE environment variable. For example...

export PANGO_LANGUAGE=ja

...tells Pango rendering to assume Japanese text when it has no other indications.

Japanese

The fonts-japanese package has been renamed to japanese-bitmap-fonts.

Khmer

Khmer OS Fonts khmeros-fonts have been added to Fedora for Khmer coverage in this release.

Korean

The un-core-fonts packages replaces baekmuk-ttf-fonts as the new Hangul default fonts.un-extra-fonts packages have been added.

Complete List of Changes

All fonts changes are listed on their dedicated page:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_inclusion_history#F10

Fonts in Fedora
The Fonts SIG takes loving care of Fedora fonts. Please join this special interest group if you are interested in creating, improving, packaging, or just suggesting a font. Any help will be appreciated.

Input Methods

There is a new yum group called input-methods and Input Methods for many languages are now installed by default. This allows turning on the default input method system and immediately having the standard input methods for most languages available. It also brings normal installs in line with Fedora Live.

im-chooser and imsettings

It is now possible to start and stop the use of input methods during runtime thanks to the imsettings framework. The GTK_IM_MODULE environment variable is no longer needed by default but can still be used to override the imsettings.

Input Methods only start by default on desktops running in an Asian locale. The current locale list is: as, bn, gu, hi, ja, kn, ko, ml, mr, ne, or, pa, si, ta, te, th, ur, vi, zh. Use im-chooser via System > Preferences > Personal > Input Method to enable or disable input method usage on your desktop.

ibus

Fedora 10 includes ibus, a technology preview of a new input method system that has been developed to overcome some of the limitations of scim. It may become the default input method system in Fedora 11.

http://code.google.com/p/ibus

It already provides a number of input method engines and immodules:

• ibus-anthy (Japanese)
• ibus-chewing (Traditional Chinese)
• ibus-gtk (GTK+ immodule)
• ibus-hangul (Korean)
• ibus-m17n (Indic and many other languages)
• ibus-pinyin (Simplified Chinese)
• ibus-qt (Qt immodule)
• ibus-table (Chinese, etc.)

We encourage people to install ibus, test it for their language, and report any problems.

Indic Onscreen Keyboard

Fedora 10 includes iok, an onscreen virtual keyboard for Indian languages, which allows input using Inscript keymap layouts and other 1:1 key mappings. For more information refer to the homepage:

https://fedorahosted.org/iok

Indic Collation Support

Fedora 10 includes sorting support for Indic languages. This support fixes listing and order of menus in these languages, representing them in sorted order and making it easy to find desired elements.

These languages are covered by this support:

• Gujarati
• Hindi
• Kannada
• Kashmiri
• Konkani
• Maithili
• Marathi
• Nepali
• Punjabi
• Sindhi
• Telugu