[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] help with an FAQ entry re: internationalization

[Jason Etheridge]

any takers, ideas?

* Does Evergreen support Arabic?  Right to left languages?  How can I
help with that?

Here's a snippet from a past thread:

> I am not certain of the state of the Arabic translations of Evergreen, if any.

Here's an answer I gave someone in the past:

Hi, the answer is yes & no.  The yes is that the software uses Unicode
from end-to-end, so for example, you can import Arabic bibliographic
records into the system to describe your materials, use Arabic script
for entry of patron data, etc.

The no is that there is currently no Arabic translations for staff and
patron facing interfaces, though that may not be a barrier if you have
the resources to provide such translations.

Also problematic is that there is no real support/testing of
right-to-left languages in these interfaces (though I suppose one
could enter in translations backwards, you wouldn't want to do the
same for data found in bibliographic records).

And lastly, while you can search your records using arbitrary Unicode
characters, I don't know how well PostgreSQL (the database Evergreen
uses) supports stemming for non-European languages.  Stemming is a
search optimization where for example, the words "parents" and
"parenting" would be indexed by a common word stem, "parent", such
that a search for either term would find both.

-- 
Jason Etheridge
| Community and Migration Manager
| Equinox Software - Open Your Library
| 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
| jason at esilibrary.com
| http://www.esilibrary.com