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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    German translation in Fraktur
From:       Gerrit Sangel <z0idberg () gmx ! de>
Date:       2008-02-05 21:42:15
Message-ID: 200802052242.15568.z0idberg () gmx ! de
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Hello everyone,

I had the idea to, well, resurrect ;) German Fraktur writing (German script) 
by making a "translation" of KDE into Fraktur. It would be quite easy because 
I could just adapt the existing German translation. There are some issues, 
though. I think I will just present them here and would be really glad if you 
could write your opinion?

The main technologies needed for Fraktur writing on the computer are Unicode 
and Opentype. Unicode is fully supported, so that will not be a problem. I 
think, an issue would be Opentype support. Does KDE currently support this? 
This would be necessary not only in text windows, but in all the captions and 
so on. Also, Opentype ligatures would be needed, because Fraktur uses 
mandatory ligatures like "ch" and some others.

The translation itself could be quite easily adapted. There would be some 
changes necessary to the s (because Fraktur uses the long s ſ), but I guess 
this won't be a problem. Also, for stylistic issues, I would think old german 
spelling is better (e.g. today's "dass" would have been written "daſs" in 
with long s spelling, but in my opinion, this looks a bit ugly. "daß" is much 
better), but this would not cause any problems.

I think the biggest obstacle would be that Fraktur often also uses latin 
(antiqua) writing in the same sentence. Most prominently for abbreviations 
with capital letters, for example "KDE" could not be written with Fraktur, 
this would just look ugly. Also, foreign words, e.g. from English, are 
usually written in Latin script.
Because Fraktur is just considered a stylistic variant in Unicode, it has no 
own code points. This would make it necessary to switch the font on display, 
which must be done by a higher level markup. In HTML, this is done via <span 
xml:lang="de-Latf"> and <span xml:lang="de-Latn"> respectively. Is there a 
similar way in Gettext? And if so, does KDE recognize it?

This would lead to my next point: The locale. I think, a new locale would be 
appropriate. But because German in Fraktur writing could not be distinguished 
either by language (which is the same), or by region (which would also be the 
same), the only possibility would be to mark it with a ISO 15924 script code. 
Do the locales offer this feature, to specify a script tag? This script tag 
(Latf for Fraktur, Latn for Latin) would also be quite suitable for labelling 
the different fonts in the translation. I do not think it would be good to 
hard code a specific font for the Fraktur variant in the translation, so that 
the user can choose the font he likes best.
But this would also make it necessary to offer more font selections. I think, 
the best way would be to make it possible to define fonts per script code. 
This would also benefit other scripts, e.g. like Chinese and Japanese. Also, 
in general, I think, this would be a cool feature in KDE, if it would support 
these script codes. As far as I know, no current programme does support them 
(which really is sad).

The last point would be to offer a Fraktur font which supports Opentype, but 
this would be the least problem. I already modified a font to support these 
features, and I guess, it will not be a problem to make another one.

So, what do you think of it? After all, I think Fraktur writing is really a 
beautiful writing, although some people think of it as negatively connotated, 
which is not the case. And, there is also Chinese simplified and Chinese 
traditional available.

It is just a bit problematically that it needs so much advanced font features, 
but I think, this would also benefit other areas. 

Thanks

Gerrit Sangel

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