[Tux4kids-tuxtype-dev] Working on the Chinese version of tuxtype

[Frederic Muller]

David Bruce wrote:
> Hi Frederic,
>
>   
> [...]
>
> The other issues I wanted to mention were:
>
> 1. Fonts - this is handled automatically on Linux by SDL_Pango, but
> for Windows, BeOS/Haiku and OS-X we need to include a font to display
> Chinese characters (at least until we get SDL_Pango working).  We use
> fonts that are included in Debian/Ubuntu.  The exact font name needs
> to be listed in your theme's settings.txt file.  I can take care of
> adding the font itself if you can tell me what Chinese font is best.
>   
yes I read that. Didn't look at this problem yet but will try a free 
Chines font in the coming days and upload the theme to the svn then.
> 2. Locale - the settings.txt file also needs to specify the desired
> locale  - e.g.:
>
> theme_locale_name= fr_FR.utf8.
>
> We have used UTF-8 encoding for all the locales (and all the word
> lists).  It is therefore possible for the translation to fail if the
> user's computer lacks the exact locale specified by the theme - not
> sure of the best way to make this more fail-safe.
>   
Also found out that this is compulsory to get the .mo file taken into 
account. Your explanation definitely matches what's happening on my 
system: i only have 2 locales.
> Cheers,
>
> David
>   
I have another question related to the Chinese input method (there are 
actually a few): we're started with the one called pinyin and this is 
how it works:
1. Each Chinese character has a phonetic equivalent using the English 
alphabet. In order to type in pinying one then need to master the qwerty 
layout which is in use on Chinese computer.
2. A combination of the same 2 or 3 English letters often results in a 
choice of many characters. For exemple 'shi' has 68 possibilities. Some 
have far less.
3. It is (almost) always a combination of several letters which produces 
a real Chinese character. So all the basic exercise using asdf... are 
fine (my point is that there is no equivalence between 1 keystroke to 1 
character).
4. Now for games with words falling like Fish cascade and comet zap 
words will be composed of 2-3 letters maximum which will be equivalent 
to 2 times 2-3 keystrokes or 3 times 2-3 keystrokes plus a selection of  
the right character (using the arrow keys or numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd 
,etc.)). Likewise for phrase typing.

So can tuxtype actually support this, and if so, how?

I have a few other issues but I'll wait for the bug tracker then ;-) . 
Is there anything I can do to help setting it up?

Thanks.

Fred