From: Don Osborn (dzo@bisharat.net)
Date: Sat Aug 19 2006 - 22:36:07 CDT
Hi Mark, As I reflect more on the original issue, and after some
correspondence with Jim Bennett who has been working on the GTZ-Guinea
project - it seems that there are a couple of categories of issues. On the
one hand there are the international development agencies (donor,
intergovernmental, NGO) who are involved in various ICT4D projects (from
telecenters to using ICT to produce content) and how current their personnel
and contractors are about Unicode and multilingual computing. (In some cases
there is a more basic issue about their interest in working with diverse
languages, but that's not a problem in this instance.) This may be where the
Technical Note you mention might be of use in, as I understand it, outlining
some considerations and approaches to address this need.
On the level of projects in particular countries, the needs seem to be on
(1) information re solutions for specific languages - fonts, perhaps
keyboards, and (2) modules for training on some basics and the specific
solutions in #1.This, especially information on #1 that can be used also for
software localization, is part of what the PanAfrican Localisation project
intends to address with a new web resource - which by the nature of things
will be an ongoing building process.
A connection of course is that any info directed to international
development organizations, in or guided by a Technical Note for instance,
would alert them to the need to address the specific needs. In addition,
both should mention the importance of being aware of issues relating to
crossborder languages - such as common keyboard arrangements, the
possibility for some content to be adaptable in neighboring countries (there
may be differences in orthography) etc.
I may be able to spin a Technical Note off from a larger paper on
localization in Africa that I'm working on.
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Davis
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 12:20 PM
. . .
But for the issue that started off this thread -- the GTZ not using
Unicode -- I don't think any of these books were really applicable. What is
needed is a guide for "development agencies", which would be really more of
a short white paper outlining the issues at a very high level. It'd be great
if one of the people on this thread stepped up to the plate, and submitted a
technical note on the topic. ( http://www.unicode.org/notes/).
. . .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Aug 19 2006 - 22:42:50 CDT