Suggestion: AmigaOS handling of foreign characters and bitmap fonts
Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2020 2:15 pm
I don't know how other languages work..
But in order to display turkish non-English characters on amigaos, you need these things:
a turkish keymap + turkish modified fonts.
The modified fonts created by Turkish Amiga users traditionally have a "-iso9" at the end of the filename.
You have to clean some characters from the fonts and redraw a Turkish equivalent of that character to the cleaned character's place.
I have a suggestion.
What if we had a little updated setmap program that is called from startup-sequence that loads a small bitmap file that automatically assign them to keys? (and even adds a generic special characters bitmap fonts file that do not have a turkish (or other language) bitmap file?
this way, we would not need separate font files for all languages we want to use.
For example:
c:setmap en tr pl
would load the files generic-tr, generic-pl, helvetica-tr, helvetica-pl (and all other xxx-tr xxx-pl files available for all fonts) and appends them to fonts.
There could be a shortcut that would switch different keymaps and/or fonts.
Can this be done for all AmigaOS versions including 4.1 ?
There is also the problem with I and i letters with Turkish. In Turkish I and i letters are totally different letters. "I" is capital of "?", and "?" is capital of "i"
So a program called "Information" is actually different than a program called "information". There actually are two different keymaps for Turkish because of this in OS4.1 fe that I have. (something like I=? and I=i) I remember choosing one of the options and Had many problem after installation and later I choose the other option.
When creating a Turkish iso9 font, you do not change little "i" to "?" but make the modified letter for little "?" to little "?". As a result, the font prefs program from OS3.9 previews to fonts as this (will try OS4.1fe classic):
AaBbÇcDdEeFfGgĞğHhIiİiJjKkLlMmNnOoÖöPpRrSsŞşTtUuÜüVvYYyZz
Instead of this:
AaBbCcÇçDdEeFfGgĞğHhIıİiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsŞşTtUuÜüVvWwXxYyZz
How can this be fixed?
But in order to display turkish non-English characters on amigaos, you need these things:
a turkish keymap + turkish modified fonts.
The modified fonts created by Turkish Amiga users traditionally have a "-iso9" at the end of the filename.
You have to clean some characters from the fonts and redraw a Turkish equivalent of that character to the cleaned character's place.
I have a suggestion.
What if we had a little updated setmap program that is called from startup-sequence that loads a small bitmap file that automatically assign them to keys? (and even adds a generic special characters bitmap fonts file that do not have a turkish (or other language) bitmap file?
this way, we would not need separate font files for all languages we want to use.
For example:
c:setmap en tr pl
would load the files generic-tr, generic-pl, helvetica-tr, helvetica-pl (and all other xxx-tr xxx-pl files available for all fonts) and appends them to fonts.
There could be a shortcut that would switch different keymaps and/or fonts.
Can this be done for all AmigaOS versions including 4.1 ?
There is also the problem with I and i letters with Turkish. In Turkish I and i letters are totally different letters. "I" is capital of "?", and "?" is capital of "i"
So a program called "Information" is actually different than a program called "information". There actually are two different keymaps for Turkish because of this in OS4.1 fe that I have. (something like I=? and I=i) I remember choosing one of the options and Had many problem after installation and later I choose the other option.
When creating a Turkish iso9 font, you do not change little "i" to "?" but make the modified letter for little "?" to little "?". As a result, the font prefs program from OS3.9 previews to fonts as this (will try OS4.1fe classic):
AaBbÇcDdEeFfGgĞğHhIiİiJjKkLlMmNnOoÖöPpRrSsŞşTtUuÜüVvYYyZz
Instead of this:
AaBbCcÇçDdEeFfGgĞğHhIıİiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsŞşTtUuÜüVvWwXxYyZz
How can this be fixed?