Hebrew on Android (and other issues)

[Shachar Shemesh]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> I have heard that the Hebrew on Android devices is lacking. Orange
> does not have a Galaxy to "test drive" at the moment, so could any
> Android users let me know of any (all) problems with Android devices?
> Hebrew- and non-Hebrew related. Thanks.
>
>   
I'll try to summarize the information, though things are not simple by a 
long stretch.

Vanilla Android 2.2 comes, built in, with Hebrew and Arabic fonts. 
These, however, arrive as separate files, so expect device manufacturers 
to pull them off. Aside from that, 2.2 is identical to all previous 
releases, which is another way of saying that Hebrew is somewhat 
supported, but sucks.

Main bugs:

    * Appointment text in day view in Calendar is displayed the wrong way
    * Numbers in Hebrew context are displayed from right to left (makes
      it extremely difficult to receive SMS instructions for, say, an
      address to get to).
    * Scrolled lists with mixed English/Hebrew items have items
      disappearing when scrolled.

Of these, I have not confirmed whether the first one is still in 2.2. 
The other two definitely are.

Phones, and possibly other devices, sold in Israel get special Hebrew 
adaptations done to them. The two I've checked are the Samsung Galaxy 
and the HTC Magic. For the later, I was the one doing the i18n 
adaptations. Both did not suffer the full scale of the first two 
problems. Both did suffer the third one, to various degrees. Also, both 
had varying degrees of completeness to the work done.

Also, many people do not run vanilla or device provided Android at all. 
Many run the Cyanogenmod[1] distribution (recently on slashdot[2]). I 
know for a fact that it incorporates a solution to at least some of the 
problems spelled above (the Calendar one at least used to incorporate a 
patch[3] sent in by me, that was never merged into Android proper), and 
thus might provide far better Hebrew support than vanilla Android.

Shachar

1 - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/
2 - 
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/09/01/0343231/Android-Fork-Brings-Froyo-To-12-Smartphones
3 - https://review.source.android.com/#change,12661

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com

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