MediaWiki is the software that drives Wikipedia but also WiktionaryZ. It is probably one of the best pieces of software when it comes to internationalisation and localisation. This is demonstrated by the many localisations that have been done already for the software. Singing the praises of MediaWiki from me can be expected; why else develop WiktionaryZ on top of MediaWiki?
This does however not mean that all is well. I have written before about the problems with the Neapolitan language and there issue with the '' combination. Today I learned that a language called Hai||om uses the "pipe" character and consequently, I cannot make it work properly in a MediaWiki installation.
There are ways around such a problem; I can use one of the alternate names; San or Saan. I can expect that there will be no Wikipedia created in this language (only 16.000 speakers). But the point is, that even a system that does really well is only as good as the next language that proves that it has an issue with it's presumptions.
Thanks,
GerardM
2 comments:
"Hai||om" is an ASCII representation. The unicode character || is representing is U+01C1: the language is spelled HaiÇom in Unicode.
It is sad that Ethnologue does not use the correct codes for these languages. Then again, it is debatable that this is an English word in the first place.
Thanks,
GerardM
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