Re: I18N, fonts and mobile (was Re: After Access – Challenges Facing Mobile-OnlyInternet Users in the Developing World)

On 5 Aug 2010, at 16:42, Stephane Boyera wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> thanks for the information.
> Could-you let me know what font transcoding is ?
> i mean the opera proxy for mini detect that a page requires specific  
> fonts, let's say hindi. What is it doing ?
> Are you saying that opera mini does not use the system fonts?

I've just received some more information. It uses system fonts where  
available.

In general, Opera Mini depends on the phone supporting the script. We  
have a special setting for those that have phone which don't support  
certain complex scripts, but it only works in some cases. You can try  
this out by going to "opera:config" in Opera Mini's URL bar. At the  
bottom there's an option to activate "Use bitmap fonts for complex  
scripts".  Change this to yes, press the save button and go to your  
Hindi site of choice. This will make the server render some languages,  
instead of relying on the phone’s support for that script. As far as I  
understand this transcodes what the server (as special instance of  
Opera) renders into a specially crafted bitmap font (so it is still a  
font, just the glyphs are turned to bitmaps, like the bitmap fonts of  
old before most fonts became scalable vectors,  and sent to the  
phone).  You can try this without Mini by going to http://www.opera.com/mobile/demo/ 
  (but be aware it will most likely work out of the box if your  
machine has the correct fonts installed)


>
> Stephane
>> I bumped into one of our Indian sales guys in the corridor and he
>> mentioned that phones in India are usually sold with Hindi fonts, so
>> Opera Mini works fine with Hindi web sites. He also mentioned that it
>> doesn't matter too much for Opera Mini as we do font transcoding  
>> (this
>> needed for for example TATA, one of the biggest Indian telecoms
>> companies) such as we do content transcoding, so it should work with
>> those languages even when there are font issues.
>>
>> David Storey
>>
>> Chief Web Opener / Product Manager, Opera Dragonfly
>> W3C WG: Mobile Web Best Practices / SVG Interest Group
>>
>> Opera Software ASA, Oslo, Norway
>> Mobile: +47 94 22 02 32 / E-Mail/XMPP: dstorey@opera.com / Twitter:  
>> dstorey
>>
>
> -- 
> Stephane Boyera		stephane@w3.org
> W3C				+33 (0) 5 61 86 13 08
> BP 93				fax: +33 (0) 4 92 38 78 22
> F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,		
> France
>

David Storey

Chief Web Opener / Product Manager, Opera Dragonfly
W3C WG:  Mobile Web Best Practices / SVG Interest Group

Opera Software ASA, Oslo, Norway
Mobile: +47 94 22 02 32 / E-Mail/XMPP: dstorey@opera.com / Twitter:  
dstorey

Received on Thursday, 5 August 2010 14:54:46 UTC