The best #news from the #Wikimedia #Language #Engineering Team II

Sometimes the best new gets better when you are corrected: Santhosh indicated that Firefox also supports the Wikimedia Input Tools. It follows that both Mozilla and Google have an extra incentive to make sure that their script support at least meets the standard set by the Wikimedia Foundation.

A modern browser fit to support the whole of the Internet has to be inclusive. The Wikimedia Input Tools prove to be an important part of the solution.
Thanks,
     GerardM

The best #news from the #Wikimedia #Language #Engineering Team

The #Internet is the #Browser. Consequently when the best browser experience becomes more inclusive because of the support for the languages the Wikimedia Foundation provides it is quite something. The Chrome browser is now able to support 62 languages with input tools. Supporting additional scripts starts with providing the Wikimedia Language engineers with another keyboard mapping.

Once language communities find out that their language is supported as well, the use of this functionality will surely sky rocket.

The Wikimedia Input Tools will enable more people to communicate on the Internet in their own language. It is an obvious precursor for the provision of knowledge in that language, that script.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Levels of competence for #Arabic in #Wikipedia III

Tools like #Google #Chrome use an engine to do the rendering for them. For Chrome it is Webkit. It is responsible to connect two items that are in separate HTML elements and make sure that the rules for the Arabic script are addressed.

What started as an observation in MediaWiki became a Chrome bug and is now a Webkit bug.

Webkit is used in multiple browsers.. This makes a fix relevant for Apple's Safari browser as well. The one question left is what will it take to bring a fix in production within those browsers in the near future.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#multilingweb - #Arabic and #Hebrew are #RTL

Amir  asked me to ask at the Multilingual Web conference in conference to people like Richard Ishida:

"How hard would it be to allow assigning element directionality according to lang.  In HTML4 and in the current draft of HTML5, <span lang="ar"> has dir="ltr", unless specified otherwise, and I find it ridiculous". 

The usual replies Amir gets is:

• Backwards compatibility
• Many websites already use HTML-5 even though it is not a finished product. This will break them

His reply to this:

• If a document explicitly specifies that it's HTML5, it should have directionality assignment by default.
• Add an attribute to the root HTML tag, something like: <html dir="bylang"> or <html dirbylang="true">

Amir has aired his view before and an answer he gets from some "standards people" is: "It would be very problematic to do it, because most web developers don't use the lang attribute". This is rather funny because this will work only when the lang attribute is used.  And anyway at some point in time the public at large do not care really about previous versions of HTML as all the websites still in use will have moved on.

What we need is proper meta data for all languages and such data can hide very nicely inside a browser. Developers of websites do not know and want to know about all the linguistic niceties necessary to support a multi lingual web. It so many ways it makes sense to provide language support from inside the browser.

At the Wikimedia Foundation we we don't just support a lot of languages, we are also well aware of the languages we support. Ours is a world-wide community of people who have the opportunity to openly complain to us about bad support for their language and they expect that their complaint is actually read and is being taken care of.

Thanks,

     GerardM

The #Mongolian #script

Have a look at the article "Mongolian script". Now do the same thing with another browser or use Chrome as your browser.

The blocks represent the Unicode characters and I do not have a Mongolian font on my system yet. What is really cool is that Chrome shows Mongolian correctly from top to bottom. So far the lack of support for top down text in browsers is what prevents us from figuring out what we need to do in MediaWiki.

It will be cool when top down scripts are supported in most modern browsers. It enables us to support the people who read the top down scripts as well and consequently it brings us closer to what we aim to achieve.
Thanks,
    GerardM

#MediaWiki supports #Amharic

Having a #font for the Ge'ez script allows you to see what a language like the Amharic or the Tigrinya language look like. Chances are that many people who have the font on their system can also read a language that uses the script.

For those people who do not have a font for this script on their computer, the Amharic Wikipedia now supports the AbyssinicaSIL font. For the people who do not know this, Amharic is spoken in Ethiopia.

When you use the current Firefox, you will get an experience like the one below. We already know that a next version of Chrome will properly support it. I do not know about the other browsers. What I do know is that Firefox is doing a sterling job for me.

Thanks,
      GerardM

#Microsoft wants to upgrade your #Internet-explorer

It has been a common practice for many browsers to upgrade itself to later versions. This practice not only brings the latest functionality to the end users, it also limits the versions web developers have to test their software for. Among web developers Internet Explorer 6 has a particularly bad reputation; a disproportionate amount of time is spend on making software work and often the result is not pretty.

The Microsoft announcement that they will upgrade Internet Explorer is therefore welcome news. Many more people will be moved towards a more modern and a safer browser. It will marginalise the use of obsolete even dangerous technology even further.

IE-6 was introduced when Windows-XP was young. The end of the line as far as Internet Explorer on XP is concerned is IE-8. This does not provide people with the best and more reliable browsing experience but it is definitely a step up.

Seeing people moved from IE-6 is wonderful. People can help themselves even more by upgrading to an alternative browser like Chrome or Firefox. It will improve their appreciation of what the modern web can provide.
Thanks,
      Gerard

#Chrome #security is a bit too much

The logo for the Hindi #Wikipedia is used as an illustration on a previous post. Illustrations like this can be saved from the "page view info" that is available by right clicking a web page.

Chrome apparently does not like the Hindi Wikipedia; it does not only prevent me from accessing the page view info, the information is incorrect as well.

I did use Chrome before today. I am quite happy for Chrome to provide me with a security warning; I hate it when it prevents me to do my job.

Particularly nasty is the warning:

The site uses SSL, but Google Chrome has detected either high-risk insecure content on the page or problems with the site’s certificate. Don’t enter sensitive information on this page. Invalid certificate or other serious https issues could indicate that someone is attempting to tamper with your connection to the site.

Such warnings should be taken seriously and reported but I am quite happy to use Firefox in stead.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Google supports the latest browsers

Supporting old old browsers is expensive. Not only are many old browsers less compatible with standards, they also do not support emerging standards like HTML5. The continued support for IE6 in MediaWiki prevents the adoption of new technology.

People who blog using Blogger have been informed that only the latest two releases of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari will be supported from August 1. It also states that this will also affect popular Google applications like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites.

Let us hope that Google will be able to force people to use an up to date browser; this will make the development of MediaWiki a lot easier and a lot less expensive.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Reading #Wikipedia in columns

When you have a big screen, reading a Wikipedia article like the one on Gandhi becomes a pain. The head must move all the time, the letters are small. Not good.

A small CSS trick allows you to read the article in multiple columns. This is only for modern browsers ... even IE9 does not qualify ... As it is only four lines, I present to you the Firefox version.

Firebug -> Console -> Paste the below script

$("#bodyContent").css("-moz-column-count", 2);
$("#bodyContent").css("-moz-column-width", "400px");
$("#bodyContent").css("-moz-column-gap", "20px");
$("#bodyContent").css("-moz-column-rule", "2px solid black");

Then click on Run.

Thanks,
       GerardM

Betawiki tools

When you localise Betawiki and you localise a language like Arabic or Hebrew, you want a user interface that goes from right to left. To do this and other things, there are gadgets available in the user preferences.

There are two ways of doing this; you can opt to change the direction globally or you can choose to have a button override it on an edit page. These two options have been there for quite some time, they have been essential for us to support right to left oriented languages.

Nikerabbit added a new gadget the other day; they allow us to change the text area font style. There are three three styles: monospaced, sans and serif. In a previous blog post I mentioned that Firefox was broken for the Lingala wikipedi. This is actually not the case; the problem is that monospaced fonts have been selected for Firefox and this is what makes Firefox, Safari and Opera break.

Monospaced fonts do not support characters like "ɔ́" properly, but the sans and serif fonts work as they should in most modern browsers.. Internet Explorer is broken because it does show the wrong characters, Chrome is broken because it does not show a character.

Thanks,

GerardM

Google Chrome fail

This is the Khmer Wikipedia on my system in Chrome.

This is also the km.wikipedia on my system with Firefox.

Google has some more work to do to get it right.
Thanks,
GerardM

Supporting Khmer in Chrome

Today I read that the performance of Chrome has been improved for Javascript. As I am in favour of a reliable faster browser, I gave Chrome another try.

One of the problems with Chrome is its support for Khmer. As you can see, Khmer does not show up as expected. Compare this with Firefox...

This screenshot is from the same machine, you will notice that Khmer shows up properly and the URL is much cleaner. Google has some more work to do to get Chrome right for me.
Thanks,
GerardM

Chrome

Google produced a new browser called "Chrome". Many words have been written about it, there is a strip explaining the technology behind it, many people have given it a test drive. I did. I think it is great.

What I like best about Chrome is its speed. The word Niue exists in many languages and this expression is one of the worst performers on OmegaWiki. With Chrome it is significantly faster. With processing done locally, Chrome makes a big difference.

The other thing that I like about Chrome is the fact that it is Open Source. Google explicitly invited the "other" browsers to borrow and steal from what Chrome has to offer. In the same way, Google happily indicates that Webkit and Firefox are part of Chrome's pedigree.

I love Firefox, it has features and extensions that are must have for me; spell checking is one such. With Chrome being the first iteration of a beta product, I think I can look forward to extensions with confidence. It is great that the browsers world is becoming even more an eco system where new developments are shared and where the scene can evolve and mature with multiple players having temporary advantages. It is the user that will benefits most.

Thanks,

GerardM

Video on the BBC website - an update

In a previous blog I mentioned that video on the BBC-news website did not work for me. I received as an answer that it "worked for me"..

I am happy to inform you that I no longer need other browsers to watch these videos. I am really pleased that I can inform you that it now works for me too.
Thanks,
GerardM

Works for me ... the BBC

I am a big fan of the BBC news. I used to listen to it in my car 648 Mhz, the BBC world service, news, no adverts, no nonsense. At the moment it is my primary source of news.

The BBC has a new skin. As always some like it, some hate it. It is functional. It is functional except for the embedded video; when I choose to see one, I get a black screen with a few dots moving in a circle.

As I want to have it work for me, I contacted the BBC, I informed them about my browser and the problem I had. I got as a reply that they had tested Firefox in their Quality Assurance process. I was even informed that "In fact I use it on Firefox every day."

I would love to repeat after this fine person; it works for me...
Thank,
GerardM