Bug 35787

Created attachment 45026 [details] [review]
Patch to update descriptions of Crimean Tatar keyboard layouts to be consistent with how most other layouts are now described (showing language first)

Most users aren't aware of the improvements made in the UI yet, so i'm including a few screenshots below just to demonstrate the language-centric characteristics of the new and improved UI.

Created attachment 45027 [details]
Screenshot with a sample UI demonstrating language-centric characteristics of the new and improved UI using as an example a major world language: English.

Created attachment 45028 [details]
Screenshot with a sample UI demonstrating language-centric characteristics of the new and improved UI using as examples languages with relatively small number of speakers

Languages in the screenshot (estimated population indicated on the right):
Cherokee	316,049+
Inuktitut	35,000
Kutenai		12
Maori		157,110
Syriac		extinct

Created attachment 45029 [details]
Screenshot with a sample UI showing Crimean Tatar layouts before the patch above is applied

It can be seen that the display of the layouts is not consistent with how most other layouts are now displayed in the new UI. This is caused by the fact that the layout names are not consistent with the language-centric naming convention now used for most other layouts.

Created attachment 45030 [details]
Screenshot with a sample UI showing Crimean Tatar layouts after the patch above is applied (please zoom the image in (resolution: 710x2660 px))

It can be seen that after the patch is applied the display of the layouts is consistent with how most other layouts are now displayed in the new UI. This is due to the fact that the patch makes the layout descriptions consistent with the language-centric naming convention now used for most other layouts.

I would like to congratulate Mr. Sabiq for the efforts that he did for the development of the Crimean tarar keyboard layouts! In Romania, as the General Secretary of the Association of Tatars, I have been appointed to establish a group of experts and to evaluate the proposed layouts for the case of Crimean Tatar language spoken in the Dobrudja region. We have consulted the the community of writers and all of them have been very favourable for the proposals submitted by Mr. Sabiq.
Prof. dr. Eden Mamut, eden_mamut@yahoo.com

*** Bug 23544 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reşat, please use the English name of the region (Dobruja), not the Turkish one (Dobruca). This is the rule for the whole file.

http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobruca
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobruja

Prof. Mamut, can you please enlighten us in regards to the Crimean Tatar latin alphabet in use in Romania? The "Dobruca" layouts include some diacritics (abreve, ibreve, tcedilla) not present in the alphabet of the Crimean Tatar language spoken in Romania as documented by the University of Bucharest and published online[1] by Taner Murat[2]. I've investigated this further on the Omniglot site[3] and its linked resources, but I couldn't find anything out there on this issue.

Thank you!

 1. http://www.tanermurat.com/ro/alphabet
 2. Taner Murat being a Romanian Tatar, author of the only Romanian - Tatar Crimean dictionary, available online at http://books.google.com/books?id=e6vnF1A0dvkC&pg=PA0&dq=9789736922657&hl=ro&ei=y9vKTImDDcyTjAfH6O3FDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false 
 3.  http://www.omniglot.com/writing/crimeantatar.php

Created attachment 45097 [details]
Report on the official aphabet of Crimean Tatar Language spoken in Romania

Dear Mr. Moldovan, Thank you for your interest on the Crimean Tatar language spoken in Romania! I would like also, to express my personal gratitude for your efforts to be informed properly. 

The Crimean Tatars are living as minority communities in many countries but the major groups are located in Crimea (Ukraine), Romania and Turkey. The official institution that represents the interest of Crimean Tatars worldwide is the International Congress of Crimean Tatars. The official institution that represents the interest of Crimean Tatars living in Romania is the Association of Tatars from Romania that has a complicated name as: Uniunea Democrata a Tatarilor Turco-Musulmani din Romania (UDTTMR). In this respect, the official alphabet of the Crimean Tatar Language spoken in Romania has been approved by the UDTTMR in April 2008. This activity is coordinated by the International Congress in order harmonize the development of the official Crimean Tatar Language. I am sending attached the report that has been prepared for the General Assembly of UDTTMR for the decison of the official alphabet. Unfortunately, i have it only in Romanian and in Tatar. If someone would like to have the copy in Tatar language please, write me! 

As Mr. Murat, there are some other persons that are using different characters and to my personal oppinion this is good for offering different perspectives. But, they do not represent an official position. 

To be very honest, in 2008 I have accepted the position of General Secretary of UDTTMR because I have seen that this problem of the official alphabet has not been solved. After, a huge effort we consider that we are at the end of the darkness. The Romanian Government offered us a unique support in preserving and promoting our mother tongue language. On May 5th we shall celebrate in Romania the Tatar Language Day (first time in our history). I hope that with your support we shall be also able to celebrate the first standard of the Crimean Tatar (RO) keyboard layout. Once againg thank you all for your support!

Dear Prof. Mamut. 

Just a side note. As a maintainer of xkeyboard-config, I would like to welcome you and express the gratitude for the time you devote to resolving the issue around Crimean Tatar layouts - and especially for the constructive and cooperative attitude. Unfortunately, we have communication problems with the contributor who represents Crimean Tatars in the project. I am really happy that we have a second highly informed opinion of the person who discusses relevant topics without getting into political and personal rhetorics. Now I can hope that together we (well, mostly you and Mișu:) will be able to find the solution that makes everybody reasonably happy.

Thank you again.

Prof. Mamut, a big thank you! I've been trying for months to contact someone that has an insight into these issues. The provided document is very interesting, I've read it in its entirety. 

I see now there is a specific need for ibreve in the alphabet used by Romanian Tatars, although this character is missing from the latin alphabets published at tanermurat.com and omniglot.com. Thankfully, the ibreve character is present in all five Crimean Tatar layouts proposed by Reşat Sabik. 

However, while I see the need for three layouts corresponding to the "Turkish F", "Turkish Q" and even "Turkish Alt-Q" layouts, I don't understand the need for two more Romanian-specific layouts ("Dobruca-1 Q"  and "Dobruca-2 Q") which mostly add tcedilla and abreve, none of which are part of the officially sanctioned Romanian Tatar alphabet. They also juggle the positions of ibreve and iacute on the F and J keys, both layouts having different positions for these characters in comparison with the "Turkish Q" based Crimean Tatar layout.

To me this looks contrary to the spirit of "Dilde Fikirde İşte Birlik" (Unity in Language, Thought and Action), but perhaps there are reasons for these two Romanian-specific variations. Can you please further enlighten us? Especially that you also mention celebrating "the first standard of the Crimean Tatar (RO) keyboard layout". By this, do you mean a specific layout? Or more than one? And which? Again, thank you so much!

(In reply to comment #9)

Lucian, as i mentioned in bug 23544, Dobruca is also a Crimean Tatar spelling, not just Turkish. I've seen it spelled as Dobroca as well, but in my
experience more often in Crimean Tatar it's spelled Dobruca (with examples of this spelling in Crimean Tatar
from Romania, Crimea, and Turkey). Usage of this spelling was meant as an indication of language variant, rather than a region (slight difference perhaps). But changing to English spelling should be OK i guess: it just won't convey the linguistic connotation that much, and will look like just a region name. I'll follow up on this.

P.S. Standard work would review these kinds of aspects and make the final decisions.

(In reply to comment #13)

The subject of tcedilla (ţ) and abreve (ă) was partly touched on in bug 23544, so i followed up on this subject, as well as on some languages needing alternative keyboard layouts: bug 23544, comment 35.

(In reply to comment #15)
> 
> The subject of tcedilla (ţ) and abreve (ă) was partly touched on in bug 23544,
> so i followed up on this subject, as well as on some languages needing
> alternative keyboard layouts: bug 23544, comment 35.

Please also read bug 23544, comment 36. I regret discussing Romanian-specific issues here, but hopefully Prof. Eden Mamut involvement will outweigh the inconvenience. Thank you all!

Reşat: this package can be translated. It has been translated in Romanian (I did a good part of the translation). All names are in English in the original package. Translations will put all names in their corresponding language.

You don't see Romanian keyboard layouts named "Română".

Dear Mr. Moldovan,
 
Please, excuse the delay of my reply! The reason was related to the fact that today we had a meeting of the group that is organizing the Program of the National Day of Tatar Language in Romania that, as I have mentioned, is fixed by law for May 5th (by the way please, give me another example of a country where for a minority of 25 000 people there is a National Day of Mother Tongue Language protected by Law). I wanted to use this oportunity to share the subject with some of the experts on Tatar language. Discussing with my colleagues from UDTTMR today, it has been unanimously considered that the problem that you have outlined is extremely important. I had a phone discussion with Mr. Rifat Ciubarov, the President of the World Congress of Crimean Tatars and we agreed that it is an urgent need for establishing an official committee having a specific responsibility on the subject under discussion. I shall present the subject tomorrow at the meeting
 of the UDTTMR Council of Representatives and this subject shall be also included in the agenda of the Meeting of the World Congress next May in Simferopol. 
 
Reading the document that I sent, you could notice that we passed a very dramatic history for surviving and preserving our identity and this history is mirrored in the evolution of our language. Today, the Crimean Tatar language is considerred as a member of the Turkic languages and there are many "scientists" trying to demonstrate that these languages are very similar. Even the desperate message of Gasprinski is misinterpreted in the sense that unity means to speak the same language. 

But, as you know "God is in detail!" and we have to look for it if we want to be fascinated by the beautiness of our world and we have to fight for the preservation of each detail if we want to pass to our kinds a world as reach as we had. Otherwise we could leave them a single perfect language, a single model of dressing and a single dish of food to be happy with them and to be grateful to us.
 
Discussing with Mr. Sabiq, we agreed that we need to propose the two separate Dobruja layouts. Dobruja 2 is including the characters according to the last official version of the Crimean tatar Language spoken in Romania. It includes two characters that are not used in the official literate Crimean tatar language. The reason is that at origin the Crimean tatar language is part of the Kipchak group of Turkic languages. Due to the influence of Turkish language under Otoman Empire and further, the literate Crimean Tatar language integrated influences from Oguz group of Turkic languages. But, the Tatars from Romania they have been left out of this process and preserved the original Kipchak structure.
 
We know that in the future probably only the Literate Crimean Tatar language shall survive but it is our duty to fight for our identity and to contribute with it to the reachness of literate Crimean Tatar language.
 
Dobruca-1 layout is meant to facilitate the usage of letter í, which used to be used before adoption of letter ĭ in its place. And here it was also a complicated decision: this character has been proposed in the alphabet of 1956 and since then, many generations have been educated to use it. So, there are still a significant number of persons that use that letter. So, to my opinion, this is just a temporarely layout that shall be less and less used.
 
Thank you for all and please, excuse me for very long answers!
 
 

--- On Thu, 3/31/11, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org <bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org> wrote:


From: bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org <bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org>
Subject: [Bug 35787] [PATCH] Display available Crimean Tatar keyboard layouts consistently with how most other layouts are now displayed (showing language first)
To: eden_mamut@yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, March 31, 2011, 10:23 PM


https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35787

--- Comment #13 from Mișu Moldovan <dumol@gnome.ro> 2011-03-31 12:23:35 PDT ---
Prof. Mamut, a big thank you! I've been trying for months to contact someone
that has an insight into these issues. The provided document is very
interesting, I've read it in its entirety. 

I see now there is a specific need for ibreve in the alphabet used by Romanian
Tatars, although this character is missing from the latin alphabets published
at tanermurat.com and omniglot.com. Thankfully, the ibreve character is present
in all five Crimean Tatar layouts proposed by Reşat Sabik. 

However, while I see the need for three layouts corresponding to the "Turkish
F", "Turkish Q" and even "Turkish Alt-Q" layouts, I don't understand the need
for two more Romanian-specific layouts ("Dobruca-1 Q"  and "Dobruca-2 Q") which
mostly add tcedilla and abreve, none of which are part of the officially
sanctioned Romanian Tatar alphabet. They also juggle the positions of ibreve
and iacute on the F and J keys, both layouts having different positions for
these characters in comparison with the "Turkish Q" based Crimean Tatar layout.

To me this looks contrary to the spirit of "Dilde Fikirde İşte Birlik" (Unity
in Language, Thought and Action), but perhaps there are reasons for these two
Romanian-specific variations. Can you please further enlighten us? Especially
that you also mention celebrating "the first standard of the Crimean Tatar (RO)
keyboard layout". By this, do you mean a specific layout? Or more than one? And
which? Again, thank you so much!

--- On Fri, 4/1/11, Prof. Eden Mamut <eden_mamut@yahoo.com> wrote:


From: Prof. Eden Mamut <eden_mamut@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Bug 35787] [PATCH] Display available Crimean Tatar keyboard layouts consistently with how most other layouts are now displayed (showing language first)
To: bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org
Date: Friday, April 1, 2011, 10:09 PM


Dear Mr. Moldovan,
 
Please, excuse the delay of my reply! The reason was related to the fact that today we had a meeting of the group that is organizing the Program of the National Day of Tatar Language in Romania that, as I have mentioned, is fixed by law for May 5th (by the way please, give me another example of a country where for a minority of 25 000 people there is a National Day of Mother Tongue Language protected by Law). I wanted to use this oportunity to share the subject with some of the experts on Tatar language. Discussing with my colleagues from UDTTMR today, it has been unanimously considered that the problem that you have outlined is extremely important. I had a phone discussion with Mr. Rifat Ciubarov, the President of the World Congress of Crimean Tatars and we agreed that it is an urgent need for establishing an official committee having a specific responsibility on the subject under discussion. I shall present the subject tomorrow at the meeting of the UDTTMR Council of Representatives and this subject shall be also included in the agenda of the Meeting of the World Congress next May in Simferopol. 
 
Reading the document that I sent, you could notice that we passed a very dramatic history for surviving and preserving our identity and this history is mirrored in the evolution of our language. Today, the Crimean Tatar language is considerred as a member of the Turkic languages and there are many "scientists" trying to demonstrate that these languages are very similar. Even the desperate message of Gasprinski is misinterpreted in the sense that unity means to speak the same language. 

But, as you know "God is in detail!" and we have to look for it if we want to be fascinated by the beautiness of our world and we have to fight for the preservation of each detail if we want to pass to our kinds a world as reach as we had. Otherwise we could leave them a single perfect language, a single model of dressing and a single dish of food to be happy with them and to be grateful to us.
 
Discussing with Mr. Sabiq, we agreed that we need to propose the two separate Dobruja layouts. Dobruja 2 is including the characters according to the last official version of the Crimean tatar Language spoken in Romania. It includes two characters that are not used in the official literate Crimean tatar language. The reason is that at origin the Crimean tatar language is part of the Kipchak group of Turkic languages. Due to the influence of Turkish language under Otoman Empire and further, the literate Crimean Tatar language integrated influences from Oguz group of Turkic languages. But, the Tatars from Romania they have been left out of this process and preserved the original Kipchak structure.
 
We know that in the future probably only the Literate Crimean Tatar language shall survive but it is our duty to fight for our identity and to contribute with it to the reachness of literate Crimean Tatar language.
 
Dobruca-1 layout is meant to facilitate the usage of letter í, which used to be used before adoption of letter ĭ in its place. And here it was also a complicated decision: this character has been proposed in the alphabet of 1956 and since then, many generations have been educated to use it. So, there are still a significant number of persons that use that letter. So, to my opinion, this is just a temporarely layout that shall be less and less used.
 
Thank you for all and please, excuse me for very long answers!

Dear Members of the Group,

Yesterday, April 2nd, we had the General Assembly of the UDTTMR Council of Representatives. On the agenda it has been included an item related to the organization of the Celebration of the Crimean Tatar Language in Romania on the 5th of May. So, it has been a good opportunity to introduce very briefly the excellent work that you did up to now. I have presented the proposed keyboard layouts. There were several questions and finally it has been taken the following decision: Taken into account the fact that there is a single official alphabet that is approved in Romania for the Crimean Tatar spoken in Romania, it should be a layout that should be based on it (that was proposed as Dobruca 2). We consider that with your support this layout should become a standard. This layout should also integrate the characters of the Romanian alphabet in such a way that a person that is writting in Tatar to be able to write in Romanian using the same layout. The level of each character whether it is 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th and location is an issue that should be established by experts as you are. In this respect, I have been appointed as the contact person for being in touch with you and to follow the process until it shall be concluded a final version. The final version shall be reported by myself to the Council.

I have proposed and the members of the Council approved to invite you to present your work in a paper to be printed in our Journal - Karadeniz. The community should know about your efforts. In this respect, also, we shall be extremely grateful if you will accept to join the seminar that we shall organize on May 5th at 3pm (time in Constantza). The participation might be even through Skype connection. The works of the seminar shall be broadcasted live on internet at the www.tatars.eu. 
 
Thank you for all your support!

Prof. Mamut, thank you again! I feel we are starting to make some steps in the right direction. But given the multitude of Tatar alphabets in Romania I am looking also for some feedback from Mr. Taner Murat, the author of the only Romanian-Tatar dictionary, which has responded these days to my mails. He is also willing to help, but not here, so I have also included you and Lucian in my latest reply to Mr. Murat.

For the reference, I will upload a document with three additional Romanian Tatar alphabets received by me from Mr. Baubec Sucri on the Caslar Yahoo Group[1]. I am not looking for contesting the officially adopted alphabet, just trying to take into consideration the fact that there could be some extra diacritics in use among the Romanian Tatars which would maybe deserve to be included in a Romanian Tatar layout.

1. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caslar/

Created attachment 45200 [details]
List of Crimean Tatar latin alphabets

Provided by Mr. Baubec Sucri on the Caslar Yahoo Group.

(In reply to comment #17)
> Reşat: this package can be translated. It has been translated in Romanian (I
> did a good part of the translation). All names are in English in the original
> package. Translations will put all names in their corresponding language.

Yes, i'm aware that there is l10n, and it is also translated to Crimean Tatar. There's another possible subtlety that i was referring to, but we don't need to go there at this time. I'm adding a follow-up patch to update the spelling to Dobruja. I had been waiting for the decision from Romania to make the change once.

Created attachment 45203 [details] [review]
Update to use English spelling (Dobruja), as well as to add shortDescription, consistently with how it's been added for most other languages in the new language-centric approach

Plus a minor typo fix for symbols/tr.

(In reply to comment #20)

Dear Prof. Eden Mamut,

I'd like to thank you here as well. Your time and efforts are really making a lot of difference!

Based on the decision that has been made at the present time, i've submitted an incremental patch in bug 23544, comment 39 (it's dependent on 2 patches in this bug).

Thank you very much again!

(In reply to comment #21)

Concerning 1956 orthography:
Generally speaking, all letters in 1956 orthography are already available as well: a dead_acute diacritic is already available on the 4th-level for a-acute, o-acute, and u-acute (á, ó, ú). E.g., typing á is possible in 2 steps (due to using dead_acute):
1. AltGr+Shift+ş
2. a
Of course, for capital letter, step 2. would be Shift+a.
This isn't very user-friendly.

If for extra characters in this orthography a non-minimalistic approach is preferred, there could be 2 approaches to that:
A. letters á, ó, ú could be added explicitly, for example, as the 3rd and 4th level characters on keys d, g, and h. In that case, letter á, for instance, could be typed as AltGr+d.
B. I personally think that even approach A. would still not make the layout convenient enough for 1956 orthography. If there really was a desire to enable people to type comfortably using 1956 orthography, there would need to be a separate keyboard layout for it, which is why an explicit effort to account for it hasn't been made so far (it would require a separate keyboard layout), although i was going to inquire about people's attitude's to it as an alternative layout when time allowed. That separate layout could then provide provide î instead of ı, ó instead of ö, ú instead of ü, and á instead of â.

Either A. or B. might be a good idea IMHO (though i personally don't see approach A. as sufficient), but i am also fully aware that it's a somewhat sensitive subject, so it's up to Romanian Tatars and their "great men" (erkân or erkán), such as Prof. Eden Mamut, and Mr. Taner Murat.

great. committed. I like patches when they remove things.

Looks good.

As a side note: it would have been preferable if the commit was made using --author flag, as i think most patches are committed lately (if not they really should be). However, I am definitely not asking for the patches to be re-committed. This is just a side note about a formality (& since other folks are getting credit in the logs, i wouldn't mind getting some either). That said, the main thing is the code, and everything is OK as far as the patched code goes. So this is just an FYI for the future...

Thanks.