Mobile i18n

Status
The ability to read and write Wikimedia content is a first premise, critical for those languages using scripts with poor or no commercial support. Installing fonts and language packs can be trickier or even impossible in certain mobile platforms or in certain devices distributed by certain operators. As a rule of thumb, cheaper devices have a more restricted expandability - and many times are those cheap devices the ones most commonly used by the speakers of those unsupported languages...

Language support includes many areas and actually some of the most demanding for a device vendor (e.g. all pre-installed apps localized in language XX) are not critical for Wikimedia projects. What really matters for us is:


 * Fonts supported in browser.
 * Possibility to install additional fonts.
 * Text input supported.
 * Possibility to install additional virtual keyboards.
 * Text prediction supported.
 * Possibility to install additional predicted languages.
 * Dictionaries supported.
 * Possibility to install additional dictionaries.

Unicode support
When a platform supports Unicode, we can send web fonts to a device and make texts readable. What we need to do is test the extend keyboards on plarforms react like keyboards on computers. When they do, the Narayam extension may allow for entering texts on a device.

The advantage of providing web fonts is that it obviates the need for people to install fonts. This will substantially increase our reach as most people do not want/dare to do things like installing fonts

When a platform does not support Unicode, we can not directly be read. When people can use Opera Mini, they can use this to get text rendered as graphics. This technology is also used by websites as the BBC. When we are to support this, we need to be able to recognise the device as one such. It may be that we want to provide graphics in a size optimised for a screen.

Current Situation
iOS in general has better language support than Android - including built in IMEs. However, additional IMEs can not be installed - you are stuck with whatever Apple gives you. There exist a lot of apps that provide functionality equivalent to an IME. You type your characters in, and then copy paste it to wherever you want. This is highly cubersome and requires a lot of task switching - but is the only method available on non-jail broken phones. And many of these apps for many languages are not free.

Potential Solutions

 * 1) Develop an App that lets people pick an IME, type in it, and copy paste to wherever (sortof done )
 * 2) Add in IME selection to the Wiki Apps (many of them!) and the Wiki websites
 * 3) Investigate solutions that add IMEs for other languages, but require Jailbreaking

Current Situation
The biggest issue for language support in Android is rendering support rather than IMEs. Android 2.x usually has very bad Indic rendering support, and Can Not Be Fixed(TM). 4.0 had intermittent support inside webkit, and 4.1 bought full rendering support (though bugs still persist).

Custom IMEs can be installed by the user - this is as simple as downloading an 'app' from the Play store. IMEs for a lot of languages already exist, but the quality is usually not upto the default keyboard standards. Some are paid apps too - and switching languages is a pain.

Solutions

 * 1) Fork the default Google Android IME, add support for a lot more languages to it (with rules from jQuery.IME). This can be shipped as an app for people to use, and then we could also 'lobby' google to include this in the default builds
 * 2) Add in IME selection to the Wiki Apps (many of them!) and the Wiki websites