Qin Ubuntu ISO for PRC (China)

Registered by Gary Ekker

With 11.10 we released a localized image for China. This image contained many customizations to make Ubuntu more appealing to users in China. This included significantly improving support in CJK languages, adding gwibber plugins for services popular in China etc. There are still some improvements that can be done to cary this work forward for our Chinese community.

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
Gary Ekker
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Whiteboard

Qin China images: http://china-images.ubuntu.com/

Discussion topics:
Should remove twitter, facebook and identi.ca gwibber plugs? because they are blocked in China
- Them not working in China might give a bad user experience
- recommend to have an option to list those services and hide from default
 - Recommendation to prioritize sina & sohu above the other services

Music player (Banshee/Rhythmbox), should start to consider google.cn/music integration?
- Other popular web based services: 1ting.com, music.baidu.com
- Other plugins: last.fm (but not popular in China)
- There is a banshee plugins available for Douban(which provides streaming music)
- A standalone application for Google music streaming: GMbox (Currently in multiverse(not available in ubuntu repo, and even is not under well maintained))
 - need a tool for conversion of id3 tags in music files to UTF8 (we have this kind of tool in repo)
 -- An option would be to provide a way for the user to choose the priority of encodings used in the music player (as Amarok does it)

Which fonts is the best to be the default Chinese font in Qin (currently it's uming, which is a serif font
- CJK fonts share codepoints, so it does matter in which order they are listed in fontconfig (fontconfigvoodoo was designed to help deal with this?) (SHould investigate to confirm that fontconfigvoodoo is putting the Chinese fonts in the correct order)
- This may be relative to https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/879069
Is microhei the best GUI font (ttf-wqy-microhei)?
microhei is the best gui font and should be selected by default in zh_TW locale
How many Chinese fonts should be availiable in Office suites for document printing, (songti, kaiti, heiti, lishu)?

Preferred fonts:
- microhei (good for the most common cases, some quality concerns, but it seems to be the best choice)
- zenhei

Should remove youtube plugin in Totem?

Should integrate gnome-tweak-tool in Qin in order for users change their system fonts or so
Input method
Are there any other issues affecting a Simplified Chinese user's experience?

 Google Pinyin: http://www.google.com/intl/zh-CN/ime/pinyin/http://code.google.com/p/scim-googlepinyin/ for the SCIM one for Linux
Will need handwriting input method in future

chloric has done the following analysis for his work item below: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Chinese%20Character%20Input

Work items:
[pitti] add extra web launchers to ubuntu-defaults-zh-cn once we get a license for their icons: BLOCKED
pitti, 2011-07-20: Full version of -defaults-zh-cn does not have the requested launchers, as these are blocked by getting redistributable and free icons (currently being discussed between OEM and legal). It has been tested and verified that adding them works, though.
[gekker] Follow up with kenvandine on whether gwibber plugins can be prioritized or enabled/disabled by the user (wrt Twitter, Facebook and Identi.ca plugins)
[gekker] Investigate plugins for google.cn/music 1ting.com, douban, mp3.baidu.com
Investigate how to convert id3 tags to UTF-8 or how to provide a way to specify the priority of encodings in the music player
[chloric,zhengpeng] Evaluate sunpinyin vs libgooglepinyin(http://code.google.com/p/libgooglepinyin/)
sunpinyin < 2.0.4 is not so efficient, the dict is not good.
libgooglepinyin does not have Shuangpin (双拼)
[pitti] create china image for precise

(?)

Work Items