
Contents
--------
1. Introduction
2. 8-bit locales
     2.1 Fonts
     2.2 Keyboard
3. UTF-8 locale
     3.1 Fonts
     3.2 Keyboard
4. Contact

1. Introduction
---------------
AbiWord supports the standard localisation mechanism using LANG
and LC_ variables (if you are not familiar with this mechanism
see `man locale' as well as the relevant HOWTOs). It works with 
both 8-bit locales and UTF-8 locale. However, if you are using
locale different than Latin-1 (iso 8859-1) there are some things
you will need to do to get correct behaviour. Please note that 
this document does not contain instructions how to set up a 
particular locale on your machine, only things you will need to
do to get AbiWord working under non-Latin-1 locales. (For 
general instructions on how to setup a particular locale on your
computer, you should see the relevant HOWTO.)



2. 8-bit locales
----------------
2.1 Fonts
The default AbiWord locale is en_US. If you use a different, non-
Latin-1 locale, you will need to provide your own fonts. AbiWord
fonts are located in /usr/local/AbiSuite/fonts directory (unless
you chose to install elsewhere, of course). You need to create
a directory in the fonts directory named according to your locale. 
For instance if you are going to use he_IL locale, you create a 
directory he-IL (use dash instead of the underscore). Now you just
put your fonts in this directory in the same manner you would 
install additional fonts into the main fonts directory (you will 
find details in the UnixFonts.txt document). When you install your
fonts in there, you should further create a symbolic link in this 
directory to the files adobe-full.u2g and adobe-short.u2g, both 
of which are located in the main fonts dir. Thus in the he_IL 
case do:
	cd /usr/local/AbiSuite/fonts
	ln -s adobe-full.u2g he-IL/adobe-full.u2g
	ln -s adobe-short.u2g he-IL/adobe-short.u2g

2.2 Keyboard
There is nothing you need to do about your keyboard for the sake of 
AbiWord, it should be set up as is normal under the locale in question.


3. UTF-8 locale
---------------
3.1 Fonts
To use UTF-8 locale with AbiWord, you will need to install Unicode
fonts; AbiWord does not support font sets. In my experience, it is
not possible to set up pfa and pfb fonts under XFree86 4.0.2 to 
behave as Unicode fonts (if you find a way to register a pfa font
with the server as a Unicode font, please let me know, so that I can
update this document). Thus you may have to use TTF fonts only. You
will find general instructions on installing and using TTf fonts with
AbiWord in the UnixFonts.txt document.

Otherwise, the general procedure is the same as above, except that 
the coding has to be specifed for the directory name. For instance, 
if you want to use British locale with UTF-8 coding, you should call 
your fonts directory en-GB.UTF-8.

3.2 Keyboard
Under UTF-8 locale AbiWord uses the same keyboard handling mechanism
that the UTF-8 enabled xterm does, and your keyboard can generate
arbitrary Unicode values. There are two ways to assign a Unicode 
character to a key. (1) you can use one of the standard X keysym names;
(2) assign a numerical value to the key that you obtain by adding the
Unicode code to 0x01000000. For instance to assign Hebrew letter Aleph
(U+05d0) to a key, you can either use the X name hebrew_aleph or 
0x010005d0 (please note that the latter mechanism only works for 
characters with values < 0xffff).

The deails of how to assign a value to a key can be found in xmodmap
documentation (if you use KDE, you can use the very convenient 
international keyboard utility, but will have to create your own
kibd file).

4. Contact
This document was created by <tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net>.
