6 ms·

I wonder how the decisions for inclusion of languages were made, as there are some very odd decisions. For example, Osmanya is a script created for the Somali l

by jdmitch 12y ago

I wonder how the decisions for inclusion of languages were made, as there are some very odd decisions. For example, Osmanya is a script created for the Somali language that was hardly ever used (Somali literacy was only widespread after the latin alphabet was adopted - previously Arabic was commonly used). The population of actual users of this script is pretty indisputably 0. 100,000 would be a wildly ambitious estimate of the number of people who had ever actually even seen the script. On the other hand, Oriya, which has over 33 million native speakers, including 80% of India's Odisha state, does not appear to be supported.

kijin 12y ago
It's probably just a matter of whether or not there's somebody in the relevant team(s) who is familiar with, or at least has heard of, any given script. I wouldn't be surprised if there happens to be an Osmanya geek in Google, but none of his teammates has ever heard of Oriya. For the same reason, I wouldn't surprised if they added a bunch of geeky fictional languages before actual ones.
- sandGorgon 12y ago
  have an upvote if you file an enhancement request for Tengwar [1] at https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list !! [1] http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tengwar.htm http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tengwar.htm
  - kijin 12y ago
    Unfortunately, Tengwar is not an official part of Unicode. Ditto for Klingon.
lstamour 12y ago
In their defense, when you click India and scroll down, it does say, "not supported yet". Which leads me to believe they picked both languages with few characters (or straightforward to render?) and those most common, and they'll get to the rest shortly. :) Oriya appears to be quite complicated to render: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/oriya/intro.htm http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/oriya/intro.... Meanwhile, I wonder if this means we'll see OCR and ePubs for all kinds of scripts now; or if this will help enable Google Translate in more languages? ;-)
- soperj 12y ago
  Also maybe this was a %20 time thing and the programmer who started it just wanted to do those languages (probably because they couldn't be found elsewhere).
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    I thought they didn't do 20% time anymore.
    - rictic 12y ago
      It's still a thing, though it does depend to some degree on one's manager.
  - beamatronic 12y ago
    %20, the final frontier
- ultimoo 12y ago
  "Oriya is similarly structured to Devanagari and is used to write the Oriya language in Indian state of Orissa." Devanagri is what Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit use, so I am certain that it isn't any more complex to render than those languages.
aquilaFiera 12y ago
Perhaps even more curious is the inclusion of Deseret, a toy language developed by the Mormons in the early 1800s. It never caught on and few books other than the Book of Mormon were ever translated into it.
- talideon 12y ago
  Deseret wasn't a language, it was simply a script to go along with a reformed version of English with simplified spelling.
snambi 12y ago
Good observation.
grrowl 12y ago
Good pick, but I also see the value in preservation — maybe 500 years from now, the Noto fonts will be the best or only representation of many dead or forgotten scripts and languages.
- ubernostrum 12y ago
  Although they are non-prescriptive, the Unicode Osmanya table: http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10480.pdf http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10480.pdf already contains reference glyphs. If you want to preserve scripts, preserve Unicode tables instead of making fonts.
  - bcoates 12y ago
    There are many more glyphs than there are codepoints -- a font contains a ton of information that would be needed to reproduce a script that is not present in unicode tables.
    - acdha 12y ago
      This is particularly true for non-European languages – ligatures are a minor feature for most of the languages using latin-1 but there are quite a few which depend on complex, multi-letter combinations which are required for text to be comprehensible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_text_layout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_text_layout
fzerorubigd 12y ago
And the fun thing is, there is two OLD! persian script available, (Pahlavi, OldPersian Both dead for almost 1500 year) and the current Persian is not supported :)))
- Fuxy 12y ago
  I'm guessing their going for the ones nobody would ever put the effort into supporting first and get to the current ones later.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
harty65 12y ago
I noticed the inclusion of Cornish. As of 2011 there were 557 people that claimed Cornish as their primary language.
- peteretep 12y ago
  Sure, but, there are no Cornish glyphs. Cornish is entirely writeable with the same characters you write English with, so you get it for free
sahoo 12y ago
Hi fellow Oriyan, google has very bad support for Oriya,since IT is not that great as in R&D in odisha, I work in IIIT hyd, which is the leading NLP lab in India and I dont see anything in Oriya.

by jdmitch 12y ago

kijin 12y ago

It's probably just a matter of whether or not there's somebody in the relevant team(s) who is familiar with, or at least has heard of, any given script. I wouldn't be surprised if there happens to be an Osmanya geek in Google, but none of his teammates has ever heard of Oriya. For the same reason, I wouldn't surprised if they added a bunch of geeky fictional languages before actual ones.

sandGorgon 12y ago
have an upvote if you file an enhancement request for Tengwar [1] at https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list !! [1] http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tengwar.htm http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tengwar.htm
- kijin 12y ago
  Unfortunately, Tengwar is not an official part of Unicode. Ditto for Klingon.

lstamour 12y ago

In their defense, when you click India and scroll down, it does say, "not supported yet". Which leads me to believe they picked both languages with few characters (or straightforward to render?) and those most common, and they'll get to the rest shortly. :) Oriya appears to be quite complicated to render: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/oriya/intro.htm http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/oriya/intro.... Meanwhile, I wonder if this means we'll see OCR and ePubs for all kinds of scripts now; or if this will help enable Google Translate in more languages? ;-)

soperj 12y ago
Also maybe this was a %20 time thing and the programmer who started it just wanted to do those languages (probably because they couldn't be found elsewhere).
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  I thought they didn't do 20% time anymore.
  - rictic 12y ago
    It's still a thing, though it does depend to some degree on one's manager.
- beamatronic 12y ago
  %20, the final frontier
ultimoo 12y ago
"Oriya is similarly structured to Devanagari and is used to write the Oriya language in Indian state of Orissa." Devanagri is what Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit use, so I am certain that it isn't any more complex to render than those languages.

aquilaFiera 12y ago

Perhaps even more curious is the inclusion of Deseret, a toy language developed by the Mormons in the early 1800s. It never caught on and few books other than the Book of Mormon were ever translated into it.

talideon 12y ago
Deseret wasn't a language, it was simply a script to go along with a reformed version of English with simplified spelling.

snambi 12y ago

Good observation.

grrowl 12y ago

Good pick, but I also see the value in preservation — maybe 500 years from now, the Noto fonts will be the best or only representation of many dead or forgotten scripts and languages.

ubernostrum 12y ago
Although they are non-prescriptive, the Unicode Osmanya table: http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10480.pdf http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10480.pdf already contains reference glyphs. If you want to preserve scripts, preserve Unicode tables instead of making fonts.
- bcoates 12y ago
  There are many more glyphs than there are codepoints -- a font contains a ton of information that would be needed to reproduce a script that is not present in unicode tables.
  - acdha 12y ago
    This is particularly true for non-European languages – ligatures are a minor feature for most of the languages using latin-1 but there are quite a few which depend on complex, multi-letter combinations which are required for text to be comprehensible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_text_layout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_text_layout

fzerorubigd 12y ago

And the fun thing is, there is two OLD! persian script available, (Pahlavi, OldPersian Both dead for almost 1500 year) and the current Persian is not supported :)))

Fuxy 12y ago
I'm guessing their going for the ones nobody would ever put the effort into supporting first and get to the current ones later.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

harty65 12y ago

I noticed the inclusion of Cornish. As of 2011 there were 557 people that claimed Cornish as their primary language.

peteretep 12y ago
Sure, but, there are no Cornish glyphs. Cornish is entirely writeable with the same characters you write English with, so you get it for free

sahoo 12y ago

Hi fellow Oriyan, google has very bad support for Oriya,since IT is not that great as in R&D in odisha, I work in IIIT hyd, which is the leading NLP lab in India and I dont see anything in Oriya.