Bad news : N900 is not supporting Arabic "yet" - Page 2 - maemo.org

Rashoodz | # 11 | 2009-10-30, 04:29 | Report

Actually I'm quite happy for the "English-only" solid keyboard, I didn't like how messy was the Arabic keyboard on my E71, they removed some symbols like " ; " for example. I had to press the symbol button each time I wanted to wink lol.

I rarely type in Arabic, I do enjoy receiving Arabic. I think on-screen keyboard will be a nice feature for the phone. If I was a hardcore Arabic typer I would not buy this phone, I'll wait for the non keyboard version of it.

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jayhule | # 12 | 2009-10-30, 16:26 | Report

I agree that at least an on-screen keyboard is essential, UI and physical keyboard will come and isn't essential for me but without input with a virtual keyboard...well that would be good at all. If I understood correctly receiving text works and I'm thankful for that leaving only the need for input, so...

...Let us know if we can help make this happen!

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konttori | # 13 | 2009-10-31, 09:39 | Report

I think we could at least make an installable extra keyboard layout for the arabic.
My only ocncern is that we have two fewer keys in the on screen keyboard than there are usually keys in the arabic keyboards. But I'm sure we can handle those somehow.

Basically, we don't have space for the
http://www.abckeyboards.net/language...ard_layout.gif

Rightmost key on the first alphabet row and we don't have space for the rightmost key on the lowest alphabet row. But those keys can be moved behind shift key.

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Rashoodz | # 14 | 2009-10-31, 15:51 | Report

^ some Arabic keyboard phones have 2 letters in one button. My Blackberry Curve have 5 buttons that have 2 Arabic letters each.

EDIT: I found the N97 Keyboard.

2 letters on 10 buttons :P

Last edited by Rashoodz; 2009-10-31 at 15:58.

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0Dark Knight0 | # 15 | 2009-11-01, 10:19 | Report

Dear Maemo & Nokia,

Plz, try to solve the Arabic issues in N900 before launching them to arabin country ( specialy in Gulf-GCC), otherwise, your sales will affect sharply....

(i think you know that)

plz, do your best.....

abu9al7 | # 16 | 2009-11-01, 19:23 | Report

Originally Posted by qgil View Post

Just to set the expectations right: Arabic hardware keyboard and Arabic localization of pre-installed system and applications is not in the current plans. Never say never, but I personally doubt we will see this officially supported in Maemo 5.

I'm happy helping getting things done in the software side when it comes to push documentation or strings out. Yesterday I got a question about Catalan, which has common problems with Arabic and any non-supported language. It is expected that more volunteer translators from other languages will show up.

Sorry for the delayed ,
I wonder , is there an Arabic programmer team in Middle East Nokia ? tow reasons for this quiz :-
1. all the past Arabic supporting cellphone , who did translate them ?
2. The officially sellers in Nokia Care said that N900 will released in the Middle East with full support for Arabic !! I've heard that they had entered to a course "How to deal with N900 ?"

but for sure we can't get the right information from sellers

abu9al7 | # 17 | 2009-11-01, 19:25 | Report

Originally Posted by allnameswereout View Post

For third party Maemo software there is community project to make a framework to allow volunteers to provide translation for software. A testbed for application Conboy can be found and discussed here.

Thanks a lot for the information , I've helped Conboy with the translation

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abu9al7 | # 18 | 2009-11-01, 19:26 | Report

Originally Posted by qgil View Post

fwiw there are some Arabic related locale settings when selecting Region in the latest image I'm testing:

Arabic (Bahrain)
Arabic (Kuwait)
Arabic (Oman)
Arabic (Qatar)
Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
Arabic (United Arab Emirates)

This is only used for locale settings such a timezone, currency units and so on. Better than nothing...

Of course it's better

abu9al7 | # 19 | 2009-11-01, 19:31 | Report

Originally Posted by konttori View Post

Well, Arabic fonts are there, we chose 3 pretty good fonts for you to enjoy. Rendering works perfectly in browser, pdf reader, file manager, you name it. Also, text is automativally rendered right to left automatically. Media file content is extracted in arabic as well and overall, there should be very nice arabic experience support by default on the device. A big thing that is missing is the input support and the translations. But we are eagerly awaiting for community contributions for those.

Messaging also works well. [Edit] Of course only for *receiving*

Thanks for the clarification
I think we could do it but the only thing we need mostly is the instructions from some experts to make a useful solution to this problem

abu9al7 | # 20 | 2009-11-01, 19:37 | Report

Originally Posted by Rashoodz View Post

Actually I'm quite happy for the "English-only" solid keyboard, I didn't like how messy was the Arabic keyboard on my E71, they removed some symbols like " ; " for example. I had to press the symbol button each time I wanted to wink lol.

I rarely type in Arabic, I do enjoy receiving Arabic. I think on-screen keyboard will be a nice feature for the phone. If I was a hardcore Arabic typer I would not buy this phone, I'll wait for the non keyboard version of it.

I don't know , Maybe for you it's good but for a lot of Arabs it's not

see when you want to right something in a forum or writing messages to your friend , on-screen keyboard will not help you because it will take the whole screen so you can't see the conversation

If we want to wait we'll wait forever