What languages work as of today (2018)?

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mondainai

Most info about language support that I've found seems outdated, so I thought I'd ask:

I need to make a leaflet in English, Chinese, Tigrinya, Amharic, Arabic and Dari (Persian).

Is it worth downloading Scribus for this?

a.l.e

if you try, you have to try the development version.

english, arabic and dari should work.
i think that chinese is should somehow work even in the stable version.

i don't know anything about tigrinya and amharic.

with a bit of luck, you could be able to achieve your goal.

if you're willing to try it out, please report here, what were the results.

GarryP

I think it would be very useful to a lot of people if there was a page - probably on the wiki - containing a table with the following information:

* Language;
* The earliest version of Scribus that has been proved to properly handle that language;
* The earliest version of Scribus that is shipped with a spell checker for that language.

(By "proved to properly handle that language" I mean that people have been using that version of Scribus to successfully and consistently create documents in that language without any major problems.)

This would give people a quick and easy way of seeing if the language they wanted to use was supported.
Some footnotes could also be supplied to give potential users some indication of which features might not work "perfectly" for certain languages, E.g. which dialects are not fully supported.

This may give some people reservations about using Scribus - if the language they need isn't on the list - but it might also prevent people from being frustrated by trying to use it with languages it doesn't support.

An extra column could also be given listing some free fonts that have been proven to work well with each language. That would help people to get working on their documents quicker without much extra hassle.

a.l.e

afaik the wiki has a list with details on language support...

but, as you see, you don't know it exists, i did not think about having a look in it, and mondaini could not bother looking for it... (or could not find it)

probably, it's more useful if people try it out and ask questions...
and, possibly, write a report about their experience : - )

since we have this topic open, i would be interested to know how good is the support for chinese and japanese in 1.5.x ... is there anybody in here who knows about it?
(i've been reading for years about people trying to layout chinese and japanese text and i think that it basically works... at least if you write from left to right...)

GarryP

I had a look for this sort of thing the last time this kind of question came up and didn't find anything.

Since it's come up again I thought I'd mention it. (I've just done another quick search and couldn't find anything obvious.)

I don't have a problem with people asking the same question - whether they've looked for the answer or not - I just thought it might be useful to have somewhere to point people towards instead of various people having to remember bits of what works and what doesn't and having to keep giving the same types of answer.

Just thought it might be helpful is all. Maybe it isn't.

a.l.e

this is the document i was mentioning:

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Complex_Script_Functionality

it's probably not up to date and it does not make much sense to mention how complex script languages work before 1.5.3,

i still don't find many references of chinese and japanese (which are not complex script languages...)... but if you go to the chinese section in

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Made_with_Scribus

you'll find a pdf that has chinese text that (probably) go top down, right left... no idea if it was really done in scribus and how it has been done...

afaik, the biggeset issue with chinese is to get the input system to work well with scribus...



sadly, i cannot type or read any non latin language, so i cannot judge how well scribus works with them...

GarryP

Well, I certainly wouldn't have guessed I should be looking for "complex script functionality" to tell me if Scribus worked with a certain language.
At least this thread now has a link which might make it easier to find.

GarryP

While looking for something to do with another post I came across some text that didn't mean anything at the time but I later thought was interesting.

In the 1.5.3 release notes - https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/1.5.3_Release - it says "Altogether, about 500 languages and/or scripts are supported."

Where did this '500' figure come from? Does someone have a list? Either it's a complete guess or someone knows information that would be useful to a wider audience. Maybe they can publish a list.

a.l.e

the information you mention from the release notes is exactly what i would expect to find in a scribus wiki page.

sadly, before 1.5.3 not even "latin" languages are well supported from a typographic point of view... and such over enthusiastic messages are imo rather harmful for scribus.

concerning the language support, the best i can think about is a forum thread where skilled person post snippets and thoughts about their language support in a specific language (and with specific (free) fonts) and somebody then tries to summarize the information in a document.

Nermander

Isn't that figure from the framework Scribus uses for text handling? I can't remember the name of it right now.

GarryP

Sounds like there could be an opportunity to add a new forum in the "Scribus" section called something like "Language Support".
The regular visitors could start some threads called "English", "French", "German" etc. to give people an idea of what the forum is about and then anyone can add new languages as they come up. (A few instructions pinned to the top wouldn't hurt.)
It might get a bit messy without regular moderation but it might be useful. Better than stuff being all over the place at least.

a.l.e

I'd like to suggest to rename the "Translation and Localisation" section to "Languages, translation and localisation".

We can then add a threads like "Language: Arabic", with a sticking post explaining how the thread is to be used and summarizing the state of the thread. Each thread would have one such sticking post. (possibly translated in the concerned language).
People can add screenshots, experiences, questions, ... and moderators can maintain the sticking posts as a summary of the whole thread.

In each sticking post I would also add a few basic rules.

- Try to talk about one sinle language (but posts about multiple languages might be needed from time to time)
- All screenshots should be licensed as CC BY so that they can be further used in the documentation
- Posts in the concerned language are ok (if possible with a summary / translation in English by the author or by a moderator)

What do you think?

GarryP

That certainly gets my vote.
I only use English but it should be very useful to many other people.
(And maybe it will help to get people involved in UI translation too.)

a.l.e

I've created a first topic for Arabic.

Feel free to create one for English... if you feel it's needed : - )