An explanation and Counter-Demand on the Linguistic Bias of Tremulous

[your face]

Greetings, fellow Tremulous players.

As you may or may not be aware, Tremulous has a heavily regimented bias against languages.  This fact was obvious throughout all of version 1.1, and is apparent in version 1.2 as well.  The Tremulous community understands that the developers can not hope to support all languages in existence, but there is one very important non-Latin language which is being bluntly ignored.  This language is the rich and historic language of Hindi.  The Tremulous community accepts that there will be disagreements between the developers and fan-base in creation of the new version, 1.2.  We have accepted many changes which were not universally agreed upon, but there comes a point where we must take a group stand for our rights.  The developers have finally crossed the fine line which separates madness from proper Tremulous development.  Simply put: Hindi is a language which MUST be supported in Tremulous 1.2

If full textual rendering support for the language of Hindi is not included in version 1.2 by the final and official release, what is left of the Tremulous player-base will stop playing this game.  We hate to start such a harsh filibuster movement of development, but we have priorities which MUST be addressed before we can move on into 1.2.  So, to readdress, full rendering support for the Hindi alphabet needs to be in the official release of Tremulous 1.2, or this great game we have all worked so hard to save will cease to be played.

Thank you to all developers for reading this urgent cry for fair support to their users.  Common Tremulous players, either of 1.1, or 1.2: please sign this thread with some commentary indicating that you support this cause, so that we may impress upon the developers the severity of this cause.

Thank you again,
Mooseberry & Your Face, representing the wronged Tremulous community.

P.S.  If you believe in this cause, add the following text into your signature as a sign of your protest: मैं हिन्दी का समर्थन.   This translates to: I support Hindi.

[mooseberry]

I strongly support this cause.

[Twofacedrat]

मैं हिन्दी का समर्थन

[ziplocpeople]

I'm very disappointed that they didn't support this language from the start... It's saddening really... I strongly support, and am willing to fight for this cause! The bias can live on no longer, it's terrible really. English isn't the only language that needs support, and the developers need to realize this, and I believe that if any language should be included it should be Hindi, whether it be as a starting point, or as the only non-English language. Rise up everyone, and let the developers know how much this means, speak through your heart, to convey a message of acceptance!

tl;dr

I support this with a burning passion. मैं हिन्दी का समर्थन

[Demolution]

Show your support for Haiti!
Oh wait.....

[Odin]

Just add support for unicode already and ttf font rendering...

[player1]

image>>http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2690/4340167528_4450e928c9.jpg<<image

^^we also demand t-shirts bearing this image & legend^^

(wut, no Punjabi?)

[MitSugna]

What about Xenotarian Language. It is used in at least five planets of the Xen System for more than 10^17 years. You, human beings, can't deny us and our language for long. We are coming!

[Plague Bringer]

back on track. मैं हिन्दी का समर्थन
but, y'know, "मैं हिन्दी का समर्थन" probably means something crude and disgusting, and we're all getting.. mooserolled.

[David]

but, y'know, "मैं हिन्दी का समर्थन" probably means something crude and disgusting, and we're all getting.. mooserolled.

http://translate.google.com/#hi|en|%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%88%E0%A4%82%20%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%80%20%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%20%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A5%E0%A4%A8

[Plague Bringer]

but, y'know, "मैं पाशविकता का समर्थन" probably means something crude and disgusting, and we're all getting.. mooserolled.

http://translate.google.com/#hi|en|%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%88%E0%A4%82%20%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%80%20%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%20%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A5%E0%A4%A8

Nice to know we scrutinize jokes here, now. Ah, well. I'm guilty of it, myself.

[janev]

I support more languages in tremulous.

Lets not forget the european languages and the russians either since they are both large factions in tremulous. Feel free to flame me if it's already fixed in 1.2.

[CATAHA]

I dont think its already fixed in 1.2 (as many other bugs).
We tryed make unicode support or just cirylic support for trem, discovered its very hard task.
So i dont think devs will take care of this problem. =)

[your face]

So i dont think devs will take care of this problem. =)

If that is true, God only knows what will happen to Tremulous.

[Snake]

Lets not forget the spanish language

ñ and tíldés ftw

[CreatureofHell]

* CreatureofHell is confuzzled  

I don't see how online translators can hope to translate sentences properly anyway

[F50]

As you may or may not be aware, Tremulous has a heavily regimented bias against languages.  This fact was obvious throughout all of version 1.1, and is apparent in version 1.2 as well...The Tremulous community accepts that there will be disagreements between the developers and fan-base in creation of the new version, 1.2. We have accepted many changes which were not universally agreed upon, but there comes a point where we must take a group stand for our rights.

Excuse me, but to what "rights" are you referring to. This game is FOSS. There is no "WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE" If you have no right to demand that this software is fit for a particular purpose, what right do you claim that allows you to state you have a right for a particular language to be supported?

The developers have finally crossed the fine line which separates madness from proper Tremulous development.  Simply put: Hindi is a language which MUST be supported in Tremulous 1.2

Must? I think support for Hindi would be a good thing, and I would support that (but not code it myself). But to declare that someone *must* code this for you...I don't think you can reasonably say that. You *can*, however, write support for Hindi into tremulous yourself, and if you do I will support you. Until then, you're sounding like a troll.

If full textual rendering support for the language of Hindi is not included in version 1.2 by the final and official release, what is left of the Tremulous player-base will stop playing this game.

What? Firstly, you're making demands again. Secondly, you're making a threat. Thirdly, you're making a threat that is (IMO) absolutely and rediculously impossible. AFAIK, the largest player base is in the US and EU. Part of the reason for the language bias (I'm not saying its a good thing) is that current tremulous players tend to speak latin languages.

Thank you to all developers for reading this urgent cry for fair support to their users. Common Tremulous players, either of 1.1, or 1.2: please sign this thread with some commentary indicating that you support this cause, so that we may impress upon the developers the severity of this cause.

Indeed, except this seems to me to be no "cry", but rather a demand and troll. I think you would do well to read my sig.

[Snake]

I love this.

[player1]

miss'd it bai a miel

[CreatureofHell]

miss'd it bai a miel

+1 

[your face]

I lol'd. (@ f50)

mooseberry, ur life's dream is comin true

[amz181]

I want Latin.

and hindi ofcourse, mostly latin though

[mooseberry]

As you may or may not be aware, Tremulous has a heavily regimented bias against languages.  This fact was obvious throughout all of version 1.1, and is apparent in version 1.2 as well...The Tremulous community accepts that there will be disagreements between the developers and fan-base in creation of the new version, 1.2. We have accepted many changes which were not universally agreed upon, but there comes a point where we must take a group stand for our rights.

Excuse me, but to what "rights" are you referring to. This game is FOSS. There is no "WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE" If you have no right to demand that this software is fit for a particular purpose, what right do you claim that allows you to state you have a right for a particular language to be supported?

The developers have finally crossed the fine line which separates madness from proper Tremulous development.  Simply put: Hindi is a language which MUST be supported in Tremulous 1.2

Must? I think support for Hindi would be a good thing, and I would support that (but not code it myself). But to declare that someone *must* code this for you...I don't think you can reasonably say that. You *can*, however, write support for Hindi into tremulous yourself, and if you do I will support you. Until then, you're sounding like a troll.

If full textual rendering support for the language of Hindi is not included in version 1.2 by the final and official release, what is left of the Tremulous player-base will stop playing this game.

What? Firstly, you're making demands again. Secondly, you're making a threat. Thirdly, you're making a threat that is (IMO) absolutely and rediculously impossible. AFAIK, the largest player base is in the US and EU. Part of the reason for the language bias (I'm not saying its a good thing) is that current tremulous players tend to speak latin languages.

Thank you to all developers for reading this urgent cry for fair support to their users. Common Tremulous players, either of 1.1, or 1.2: please sign this thread with some commentary indicating that you support this cause, so that we may impress upon the developers the severity of this cause.

Indeed, except this seems to me to be no "cry", but rather a demand and troll. I think you would do well to read my sig.

Excuse me, if you won't be constructive, please don't post here.

Thank you. 

[Bissig]

Bork! Bork!

[tskuzzy]

Is it just me, or does Trem need English character support? It's sometimes hard to tell if its that, or we're simply lacking players who can type comprehensibly.

[Silver]

I support this cause.

[amz181]

Bork! Bork!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDFgtFXfnv0

meep meep meep meep meep

[Ellohir]

Spanish and French players would like to see this improvement.

[khalsa]

Unfortunately, we forgot to mention that Tremulous has ZERO internationalization support. Every string is hard-coded either into the game or into the menu files. Even if you do manage to spend enough time to translate most of the game, you will have translated base at most and not any modded VMs.

I would suggest that before any serious effort is made to translate Tremulous, we would have to rewrite a good bit of code to address two issues:

1.) Translatable messages:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/

2.) Unicode support. This means replacing the Tremulous graphical fonts with real system fonts via Freetype or another library.

+

]q3 has basically no support for i18n so for anything that would work with languages that have non-latin letters in them, you would need to modify the engine. tjw and timbo are reluctant to make major engine changes because ioq3 merges are already a huge pain, and ioq3 refuses to do anything that would break compatibility with the vms from the original q3. to make things worse, pretty much every function in the source code is littered with hard coded string literals. i don't think i'm exaggerating when i say it would take less effort to port tremulous to an engine that supports i18n than it would take to make tremulous support i18n on its current engine.

=



P.S. I hate Hindi
P.P.S http://khalsa.mercenariesguild.net/junk/punjabi.jpg

[amz181]

=

P.S. I hate Hindi
P.P.S http://khalsa.mercenariesguild.net/junk/punjabi.jpg

OMFG!