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.
 * Use of existing fonts is generally automatic. Yay!
 * Possibility to install additional fonts.
 * Extend WebFonts to the mobile interface. Needs some UI work for selection, otherwise ought to be easy.
 * Text input supported.
 * Getting JS transliterating IMEs working on the mobile web should cover most cases.
 * Possibility to install additional virtual keyboards.
 * On Android we can make a native virtual keyboard that provides our transliterations for all languages. This would work with our apps etc. Probably a good investment, but could be lowered in priority since others can theoretically do this.
 * Text prediction supported.
 * Possibility to install additional predicted languages.
 * Dictionaries supported.
 * Possibility to install additional dictionaries.
 * outside our scope for now

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.
 * Probably not practical, and would have issues with input support?

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) * A simple one is easy enough to do.
 * 3) Add in IME selection to the Wiki Apps (many of them!) and the Wiki websites
 * 4) * Currently no rush on this, we can reconsider when time permits. Getting the JS IMEs working on mobile web will be nice, probably just needs some UI work and appropriate ResourceLoader fiddling.
 * 5) Investigate solutions that add IMEs for other languages, but require Jailbreaking
 * 6) * Too small an audience for us to spend resources on, probably.

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) * This should be relatively simple to do and will be usable in all our apps/sites/etc on Android once done. Seems like a good investment in time.
 * 3) Add in IME selection to the Wiki Apps (many of them!) and the Wiki websites
 * 4) * If real IME is available, we can recommend people use that rather than something built into each app.