Translate Angband 3.1.0 to other language

[AnonymousHero]

Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't you going to need to handle those cases either way? Gettext still makes the easy cases easy...

Oh well, it was just a suggestion.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Nick

Yeah, I have it in FA, too.

Takkaria wants to move to UTF-8 (which Wikipedia tells me is unicode...), but last I heard he didn't want to do the extended character stuff. I was planning to include the xchars in AngbandBase, but maybe I should look into UTF-8. The only issue is whether I finish it this lifetime.

Hmmm. I can't find any tickets about this issue, but I'm pretty sure I recall discussion on angband-dev about this. There's a vague and unformulated plan to re-do all the text generation functions - primarily for better formatting and paging, but major secondary reasons are small screen support for mobile devices, and translation.

I guess it's a big enough issue that it needs a steer from Takkaria on his views / intentions etc. Personally I don't see any point redoing text functions for one reason (say, supporting different screen sizes) without also accommodating translation. But it's a lot of work.

[nppangband]

Originally Posted by Nick

Yeah, I have it in FA, too.

Takkaria wants to move to UTF-8 (which Wikipedia tells me is unicode...), but last I heard he didn't want to do the extended character stuff. I was planning to include the xchars in AngbandBase, but maybe I should look into UTF-8. The only issue is whether I finish it this lifetime.

That would be good. The extended character patchis a workaround to allows extended characters on the systems that could handle them, but made sure that systems that could only handle the standard ASCII set weren't left out. If we go to unicode they are completely unnecessary.

Are there any systems supported by Angband that can't handle unicode?

If Takkaria opts against unicode and does want the extended character patch, it would probably take me about 15 minutes to add it. I will be happy to take that on if a ticket is added. The hard part when we made the patch was we had to create our own fonts, since Angband was still under the old moria license. Now that it is open source/GPL, I am sure there are many other size fonts we can add.

[Nick]

I'm inclined to favour the "include xchars as a quick fix, but aim to move to UTF-8 asap" approach, but I agree we need takkaria's approval on the first bit of that. From my personal point of view, I would like to add xchars to the AngbandBase code (as I'm planning to incorporate that into FA, and I don't want to remove xchars from FA); however I want AngbandBase to remain aligned with V. So I'm going to do unconnected stuff (or possibly nothing ) on AngbandBase until the situation clarifies.

As to unicode handling - I'm guessing pretty much everything can deal with it, but only guessing.

[hernaldo]

Wow, a lot of information for a newie as me!

First: what is FA?

Second: my native language is Spanish, ASCII symbols besides, I just need these eight special symbols:
á, é, í, ó, ú, ń, Ą, ż

Is necesary to use UTF-8 for handling it? or there are other way?

Third: what object I can start to see in the source code for modify the encoding o Ascci symbols to add this 8 symbols?

[buzzkill]

Without going crazy with the source code, you could just create a custom font with a font editor. I'm sure you could find 8 characters that are never used and change them into the ones you need. Probably not the best solution, but certainly doable.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by hernaldo

Wow, a lot of information for a newie as me!

Some of us here don't always stick to the topic...

First: what is FA?

FAangband (short for First Age Angband is a variant, which I maintain.

Second: my native language is Spanish, ASCII symbols besides, I just need these eight special symbols:
á, é, í, ó, ú, ń, Ą, ż

Is necesary to use UTF-8 for handling it? or there are other way?

The other (quicker, but less neat) way of handling it is the extended characters (xchars) which have been mentioned. They are used in some variants, but not in Angband itself.

Third: what object I can start to see in the source code for modify the encoding o Ascci symbols to add this 8 symbols?

You will really need either xchar or UTF-8 support for this. I would recommend that you start by just using the unaccented characters (I'm not sure how badly that effects the meaning in Spanish), and then change over once there is some support for accented characters in Angband.

[ekolis]

As long as the game never refers to years... if you remove the tilde from the ń in ańo, you get abominations like "I have twenty-six anuses" instead of "I am twenty-six years old"!

[nppangband]

Originally Posted by hernaldo

Second: my native language is Spanish, ASCII symbols besides, I just need these eight special symbols:
á, é, í, ó, ú, ń, Ą, ż

Is necesary to use UTF-8 for handling it? or there are other way?

Third: what object I can start to see in the source code for modify the encoding o Ascci symbols to add this 8 symbols?

We are talking about an extended character patch that offers 256 characters instead of the standard ASCII that Angband currently uses. It has the 8 characters you are looking for.

The patch has been long lost, but the code can be found in FAAngband, Sangband and NPPAngband and I am sure a couple others. Just GREP the source for the following: xchar, latin1, my_toupper, my_tolower... and you will find everything you need. THere are about 5-6 functions that need to be added and called in a couple select parts of the source code.

This patch is a workaround. You can't type an accented character directly in a file and have it procesed. Instead you have to put in a special code, like ['e] and it types out é for systems that can handle it, and e for those older systems that can only use ASCII.

By the way, if anyone does have a copy of the extended character patch that we made, I would greatly appreciate a copy. Leon Marrick had it on his server, but that is down. I lost my copy when an older computer I stored it on had a meltdown.

[hernaldo]

Well, i have two options:
Translate FA, I make a couple of tests and it works!, y can put tildes (á) in the text game (for example birth.c), but not in the welcome screen (news.txt), but at least it's a breakthrough.

Or

someone help me to include xchar into Angband, and here i ask:
nppangband remember these functions?

regards!