non-English Characters

[zeckill]

A quick test in the "Learn Laszlo in 10 minutes" shows that Laszlo doesn't work with non-english characters (double-byte), Traditional Chinese (big5) in particular.

How do I make Laszlo works with double-byte characters like Chinese, Japanese and Korean? (CJK)

Thanks a lot in advance


Kenny

[antun]

Hi Kenny

Right now the LPS does not support Unicode (only ASCII and some extra characters).

Full Unicode support is planned, but I don't know exactly when it will be impletemented.

Take care,

Antun

[zeckill]

I would say internationalization is very important for any Internet-centric products nowadays, especially programming methodology supporting web-based services.

Is it the limitation of the Flash player, or is it Laszlo's limitation by itself?

Anyways, hope to see the i18n enabled version soon.

Congratulations on the innovative product.


Sincerely,
Kenny

[antun]

Hi Kenny

Laszlo apps run on the Flash Player version 5 and above, since this is the most ubiquitous install base (more than 98% I believe). The Flash Player version 6 does support Unicode (and we may one day choose to include this support), however its install base is nowhere near that of version 5.

Take care,

Antun

Is it the limitation of the Flash player, or is it Laszlo's limitation by itself?

[tsubo2004]

Hi!

I got to know the LPS only a few days ago.
It's wonderful, isn't it?

One pity thing is that it doesn't allow to use
the Japanese characters.

I am also very interested in internationalization
of the LPS. Any plan has come out after the last
reply of this thread?

Toshi@Tokyo

[david]

Thanks for the interest in this topic -- it's high on the list of issues we'll be addressing in the next version of LPS. Right now, LPS supports European characters, but not CJK characters. In the next LPS release, we'll support Unicode, with the additional requirement that applications using this capability will require Flash Player 6 or later.

We expect to deliver this capability during the first half of 2004.

David Temkin
CTO, Laszlo Systems

[ttasovac]

david, this is great news. unicode support is absolutely essential for the international success which laszlo deserves. some of us cannot possibly find use for laszlo as long as it's limited to english characters...

[hui]

===============
We expect to deliver this capability during the first half of 2004.
===============

now it is the last half of 2004,where is the UNICODE?

[weixd]

Could let us know when the version suporting to I18N comes out?

Best regards,

[hqm]

Support for Flash 6 with Unicode for apps and data is in internal testing and deployment. Hang tight, it will be out as soon as we can manage.

[nevin]

Can we have a rough release schedule on this? We're currently evaluating both Flex and Laszlo as the presentation GUI of our system.

I love to use Laszlo but without Unicode _soon_ we're pretty much falling back to Flex.

[arina]

Originally posted by antun

Right now the LPS does not support Unicode (only ASCII and some extra characters).

Does LPS support extended ASCII, such as ä, ö etc.?

Thanks in advance

Arina

[jsundman]

I cannot speak for Laszlo Systems on this subject. (I'm an employee, but not authorized to talk about dates.)

I suggest that anybody who urgently needs to know release dates and product plans (e.g. for laszlo/flex decision) get in touch with Laszlo Systems by phone or email. Depending on your situation, you may be able to get some non-public information.

John, the doc guy.

[antun]

Yes, the LPS does currently support extended ASCII. You must include a TrueType font that includes those characters. The default font (Verity) doesn't include them to save on font size. The LPS ships with a verity-plus font that contains extended characters, and you have to declare that font instead.

-Antun

Originally posted by arina


Does LPS support extended ASCII, such as ä, ö etc.?

Thanks in advance

Arina

[arina]

Originally posted by antun
Yes, the LPS does currently support extended ASCII. You must include a TrueType font that includes those characters. The default font (Verity) doesn't include them to save on font size. The LPS ships with a verity-plus font that contains extended characters, and you have to declare that font instead.

Antun, thanks a lot! It works now fine! But LPS doesn't recognize a numeric presentations of the letters 'š''Š' and 'ž''Ž'.

Letters äöüõ I can write in my lzx apps and it handles it in browser, but when user inputs them from client - server cannot handle them? Letters žš users even couldn't input in the text field <edittext>. Why is it so?

Thank you


Arina

[turgayz]

Hi,
I thought that i18n should not be a big problem with Laszlo.
Haven't tried yet (will do), but won't a servlet filter solve this? http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-05-2004/jw-0524-i18n_p.html

Regards,
Turgay Zengin

[hqm]

That is an excellent reference for people who want to generate data from Java servlets/JSPs in the desired encoding, thanks!

LPS 3.0 (alpha release available on the web site) supports Flash 6 and Unicode. The upcoming 3.0beta release will have better support for client-side fonts.

[turgayz]

Hi,
Is it possible that we can get a fix or service pack for version 2.2, just for having unicode support? That would be very useful until the 3.0 version is released.

This would be very useful for us, since I am planning to deploy an app with Laszlo 2.2 within 1 months.

Also, I was not successful with getting unicode characters work, using a servlet filter yet. If anyone manages this, please post here.

Regards,
Turgay Zengin

[turgayz]

Originally posted by hqm
That is an excellent reference for people who want to generate data from Java servlets/JSPs in the desired encoding, thanks!

LPS 3.0 (alpha release available on the web site) supports Flash 6 and Unicode. The upcoming 3.0beta release will have better support for client-side fonts.

Hi,
I downloaded the 3.0a release, but could not figure out how it supports unicode. Can you please advise? (Or is it explained in 3.0a documentation?)

[hqm]

By default, apps in 3.0 are compiled for Flash 6, and they are compiled with Unicode support, so you don't need to explicitly enable it; you should author your file in UTF-8, or else specify the encoding via the <?xml encoding="yourcharset"?> at the top of the lzx file.

The same goes for data xml files that you use with your app; make sure they are encoded using UTF-8, or specify explicitly the charset encoding using the xml declaration at the head of the data file.

Flash 6 apps use Unicode for all their strings.

[turgayz]

I am afraid I cannot make it work. I was using 3.0a core. I will try with the full download.

Can you please post an example if you were successful?
Here is my file, I could not see Turkish characters with the default font and the verityplus font. Please see the attached file "hello.lzx".

I also tried this with and without this servlet filter:

public class UTF8EncodingFilter implements javax.servlet.Filter
{
public void init( FilterConfig filterConfig ) throws ServletException
{
}

public void doFilter( ServletRequest request,
ServletResponse response,
FilterChain filterChain )
throws IOException, ServletException
{
// Wrap the response object. You should create a mechanism
// to ensure the response object only gets wrapped once.
// In this example, the response object will inappropriately
// get wrapped multiple times during a forward.
//if (!(response instanceof UTF8EncodingServletResponse))
// response = new UTF8EncodingServletResponse( (HttpServletResponse) response );

request.setCharacterEncoding( "UTF-8" );
response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");

System.out.println("req:"+request.getCharacterEncoding()+" ,res:"+response.getCharacterEncoding());
filterChain.doFilter( request, response );
}

public void destroy()
{
// no-op
}
}

Regards,
Turgay Zengin

[hqm]

There does seem to be a problem with how a servlet as you describe receives UTF-8 data from an app.


I am working on doing a trace now of what the data looks like before and after it reaches a test servlet, to see if I can figure out where it stops being treated as UTF-8.

[hqm]

Does this screen shot look like it is rendering your characters correctly?

[turgayz]

Yes it does!
Please tell me how to reproduce it.

Regards,
Turgay Zengin

[hqm]

Here is the source code which works in the 3.0 (internal) branch. I think it is working because we are using a "client font", i.e., one which is in the browser, and that has all the characters that are needed for rendering.

Let me check what needs to be changed to use this in 3.0a.

[hqm]

If you cannot find a .ttf font which contains the characters you need, you can try using a "client font", such as "Verdana" or "Arial" which will probably be available on most browsers (no guarantee though).

In LPS 3.0a, you can declare "embedfonts='false'" on the canvas, and no fonts will be embedded with the app. This is kind of a "big hammer" though, it means no fonts can be shipped in the app. Another alternative is to use embedfonts='false' on each text field individually that you want to use a client font.

The whole syntax and mechanism for client fonts will be changing in 3.0b however. So this is just an temporary solution.


[code]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<canvas embedfonts="false">
<!-- dummy font declaration to get client font, will not be needed in 3.0b -->
<font name="Verdana" src="lzsans8.ttf"/>
<view font="Verdana">
<simplelayout axis="y"/>
<text>Hello Laszlo!$,1 ?ü (Biöç</text>

<text fontsize="20">
plain$,1 ?ü (Biöç
<b>bold$,1 ?ü (Biöç</b>
<i>italic$,1 ?ü (Biöç</i>
<b><i>bold italic$,1 ?ü (Biöç</i></b>
</text>
</view>
</canvas>
[/code.

[turgayz]

Hi hqm (Sorry, don't know your real name :) )
I tried both with Verdana and Arial but with this embedfonts=false method, I got no output, strange... I mean I could not see any text at all.

I also tried the turkish.lzx, but I am missing 2 characters (ğ and ş)

I think that the best thing would be to wait for a new release (3.0a1 or 3.0b). Is it possible to have a quick release just to test the i18n support?

Regards,
Turgay Zengin

[turgayz]

Hi,
Is it possible to host a "i18n sample" on mylaszlo.com? This way we can be sure that we are talking on the same thing...