About Pyra's Debian i18n


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mgdesigner

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Hi everyone, I am from Taiwan in Asia. I am a musician and also a programmer. I followed Pyra almost 2 weeks ago and studied . Now first time post here. I feel Pyra is an awesome "Palmtop" . :)

I have a question about Debian (I am a Ubuntu Mate user): About i18n, are the whole i18n packages of Debian ported ? I mean Chinese ,Japanese,Korean input methods, fonts, etc.

I want to make sure this. then I can promote to my friends of open source community in Taiwan,Japan,HK. :)
 
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if you have no problems on ubuntu, debian probably supports the languages, too. the languages you mention (chinese, japanese, korean) should already be supported.

the first boot setup also should be able to at least setup the locale and language, but it may be mostly in english.
 
Just an Idea here:
You could create Custom Keyboard Mappings with Chinese Characters and Stuff and then put an Keyboard Overlay like on the old HP calculators around the Keyboard:
41acc.jpg
 
lukey said:
Just an Idea here:
You could create Custom Keyboard Mappings with Chinese Characters and Stuff and then put an Keyboard Overlay like on the old HP calculators around the Keyboard:
View attachment 28348
Click to expand...
It doesn't really work that way. Do you have any idea how many characters Chinese has? (Hint: reading a newspaper requires you to know about 2000 ~ 3000 of them).
 
About keyboard, I think it can be handled by self made sticker. I just want to make sure it's a real " whole Debian" not a partial one . I know Debain and also have used.

Actually speaking I can touch type,so I don't worry about print problem. :p
 
The Pyra keyboard is probably too small to touch type on, plus some things are moved around to accommodate the lack of keys.
 
Caine said:
It doesn't really work that way. Do you have any idea how many characters Chinese has? (Hint: reading a newspaper requires you to know about 2000 ~ 3000 of them).
Click to expand...

About newspaper, at least need 5000s.

About Chinese,we use "input method" (I.M. It means Chinese words index/search tool. ) software to input.

I also research about Chinese IT . Chinese characters actually speaking is an open set. Now is over 100000. Actually speaking the Chinese information digital technology is very stupid. Because a Chinese word is assembled by more basic elements in a 2D square space.(European words are 1D assembled ) You should not encode Chinese words 1 by 1. Can you imagine encode English or Deutsch words 1 by 1 but not to encode alphabets? Yes, Chinese word on computers are handled like this way. Open set words are encoded per year but not alphabets.

Actually speaking Chinese words own their "alphabets". There are 1134 basic elements . Each have different meanings (fire ,water,metal, human,forced...etc ). The situation is in the past ,computer very hard to do fast and beautiful 2D dynamic compositing, so "they"... encoded Chinese words 1 by 1. But now Chinese word dynamic generator technology turns mature and follow Unicode " Ideographic Description Sequences" spec. If those Chinese "alphabets" are all encoded (the most stupid thing is.....those alphabets not all be encoded by Unicode ), then any Chinese words can be generated (even is a future new Chinese word).

You can try this kind technology by pasting "⿱⿰OK土" into the site:
http://goo.gl/FNeAHD

This is not a joke. Indeed in Taiwan , it's a real Chinese word, a rare family name. IDS is a prefix sequence. You can also make your new Chinese words. For example
⿴囗⿰K⿰I⿰NG (siege a king. )
⿰火男 (Fire a man.)
⿱⿰女巫灬 (Burn a witch)
Have fun :p
 
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So you basically encode each of the radicals and their position in the character, right?
Neat, that's pretty cool actually.
 
rygD said:
The Pyra keyboard is probably too small to touch type on, plus some things are moved around to accommodate the lack of keys.
Click to expand...

Oh I was wrong. After checking the keymap, It indeed have a trouble. Popular Chinese I.Ms (Input Method) keymap at least need 41 keys. It looks like need to depend on touch screen I.M to handle it. >_<


7ZuP4Uy.jpg
They are those red printing, or green printing ,white ones. (based on different I.Ms)
[doublepost=1462564442,1462563505][/doublepost]
Caine said:
So you basically encode each of the radicals and their position in the character, right?
Neat, that's pretty cool actually.
Click to expand...
I think it's not "encoding" but just generating. About those compositing, is by "IDC" (Ideographic Description Characters ) in unicode 2FF0-2FFB
getfile.aspx

After knowing this, then you can create your new Chinese words. :)

For a computer it still see "a unicode IDS", but for human, we see it's a character by visual. You can say....the "unicode ids" is a "code", or the tech lets 2D Chinese words becomes 1D words.
 
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mgdesigner said:
About Chinese,we use "input method" (I.M. It means Chinese words index/search tool. ) software to input.
Click to expand...

The debian package repository says that architecture support for Universal Input method is "all/any". (so armel/armhf/arm64 are all supported) But they are now transitioning the packages to auto-anty (and none of the architectures have been tested)

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uim
https://packages.debian.org/unstable/uim-pinyin
https://release.debian.org/transitions/html/auto-anthy.html

Ah.. and for them there is a GTK2 or GTK3 or QT front-end... among other...
 
mgdesigner said:
Oh I was wrong. After checking the keymap, It indeed have a trouble. Popular Chinese I.Ms (Input Method) keymap at least need 41 keys. It looks like need to depend on touch screen I.M to handle it. >_<
Click to expand...

Not necessarily a problem, the Pyra actually has that many keys available:
  • A-Z: 26
  • 0-9: 10
  • ,.': 3
  • Usr: 1
  • F11/F12: 1
  • Total: 41 keys
  • Assign one of the shoulder buttons to an AltGr modifiers which maps each of the keys to the required character.
For a computer it still see "a unicode IDS", but for human, we see it's a character by visual. You can say....the "unicode ids" is a "code", or the tech lets 2D Chinese words becomes 1D words.
Click to expand...
That makes sense, existing applications would not be able to handle an alternate encoding. Still, sounds like we could do better than just assiging all (typical) combinations a unique code point. These 2D scripts are quite common in Asia. The Hanzi, the Kanji and Hangul all use this.

Keyboard close-up:
CaxV5srW8AElU12.jpg
 
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mgdesigner said:
I just want to make sure it's a real " whole Debian" not a partial one
Click to expand...

As far as I am aware, the Pyra will run vanilla Debian, probably with extras to make a smoother experience with the hardware but nothing taken away. Debian is generally very good about making sure as many packages as possible are available on as many architectures as possible; as someone who has used Debian on both Intel and ARM, I never noticed a difference at all.
 
Splitting the double width space and remapping the keyboard area shift (there will be another shift on one of the shoulder buttons) would do the trick. (Mainlanders have it easier, pinyin IM will work fine.)
 
mgdesigner said:
Hi everyone, I am from Taiwan in Asia. I am a musician and also a programmer. I followed Pyra almost 2 weeks ago and studied . Now first time post here. I feel Pyra is an awesome "Palmtop" . :)

I have a question about Debian (I am a Ubuntu Mate user): About i18n, are the whole i18n packages of Debian ported ? I mean Chinese ,Japanese,Korean input methods, fonts, etc.

I want to make sure this. then I can promote to my friends of open source community in Taiwan,Japan,HK. :)
Click to expand...
I guess, your question is whether the Pyra's Debian is a really (full version) Debian, at least I want to confirm this question.

Ubuntu is branch of Debian, if the Pyra runs full desktop Debian, everything should be fine, otherwise I would anticipate asian text issue as the Pyra is developed by DE people. (There are many Linux branches have issues on asian text.)

By the way, would you think it will be helpful on PR with a Chinese version of the press set?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
 
mgdesigner said:
Oh I was wrong. After checking the keymap, It indeed have a trouble. Popular Chinese I.Ms (Input Method) keymap at least need 41 keys. It looks like need to depend on touch screen I.M to handle it. >_<
Click to expand...
Excuse me, is there any traditional Chinese IM uses fewer keys similar as the IM for simplified Chinese (need about 25 keys)?
Or, something like the mobile phone's Chinese IM, which only need 9 keys?


Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
 
Caine said:
Not necessarily a problem, the Pyra actually has that many keys available:
  • A-Z: 26
  • 0-9: 10
  • ,.': 3
  • Usr: 1
  • F11/F12: 1
  • Total: 41 keys
  • Assign one of the shoulder buttons to an AltGr modifiers which maps each of the keys to the required character.

Keyboard close-up:
CaxV5srW8AElU12.jpg
Click to expand...
About the question, Traditional Chinese IM the most used - Zhuyin lacks these independent keys "," "." ";" "/"(those red ones) or they are in different places. It needs people to get used to the new keymap just like English alphabets "p" "L" are in left-bottom of the keyboard.

dTal said:
As far as I am aware, the Pyra will run vanilla Debian, probably with extras to make a smoother experience with the hardware but nothing taken away. Debian is generally very good about making sure as many packages as possible are available on as many architectures as possible; as someone who has used Debian on both Intel and ARM, I never noticed a difference at all.
Click to expand...
About CJK, this IM engine packages Fcitx, SCIM, gcin,and ibus are needed. If these packages are ready, then it's ok. Then the additional works are to tune the key mapping (I think that might need to be tuned by each countries contributers to suit Pyra keyboard) .

Ted said:
Excuse me, is there any traditional Chinese IM uses fewer keys similar as the IM for simplified Chinese (need about 25 keys)?
Or, something like the mobile phone's Chinese IM, which only need 9 keys?


Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Yes, there are stroke based IMs. Or BoPoMOFo IM (Zhuyin by roman chars).

Ted said:
I guess, your question is whether the Pyra's Debian is a really (full version) Debian, at least I want to confirm this question.

Ubuntu is branch of Debian, if the Pyra runs full desktop Debian, everything should be fine, otherwise I would anticipate asian text issue as the Pyra is developed by DE people. (There are many Linux branches have issues on asian text.)

By the way, would you think it will be helpful on PR with a Chinese version of the press set?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Excuse me, does DE mean Debian and PR mean Pyra ? About Chinese version of the press set do you mean this?

41acc-jpg.28348
 
mgdesigner said:
Excuse me, does DE mean Debian and PR mean Pyra ? About Chinese version of the press set do you mean this?
Click to expand...
The Pyra is developed by German (de) people.
It should be press kit (not set, sorry for this typo), for public relations (PR, advertising), http://cloud.openpandora.org/index.php/s/a0Q0TXV8gh5NLAC, currently there are only English and German versions, shall we translate those documents into Chinese?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
 
mgdesigner said:
About the question, Traditional Chinese IM the most used - Zhuyin lacks these independent keys "," "." ";" "/"(those red ones) or they are in different places. It needs people to get used to the new keymap just like English alphabets "p" "L" are in left-bottom of the keyboard.
Click to expand...
We do not have a full sized keyboard, so some keys are bound to end up in slightly different places. Would such a binding work:
2nsz4hl.jpgp


I probably made a few mistakes. Most notable deviation of the keyboard layout you have posted above is that ㄝ, ㄤand ㄡ move to the bottom left. So you would hold L2 to strike each of these keys.

The labels will not be printed on the keys (unless you can convince EvilDragon to make a separate keymat, but I don't expect this to happen).
The (lengthy) keyboard layout discussion has closed and is now final. This doesn't mean we can't think about sane mappings for other nationalities.
 
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