Bug 147755 - Japanese characters are not displayed vertically in the sidebar widget
Summary: Japanese characters are not displayed vertically in the sidebar widget
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: amarok
Classification: Applications
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: 2.3-GIT
Platform: Gentoo Packages Linux
: VLO normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Amarok Developers
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2007-07-10 18:03 UTC by z0idberg
Modified: 2009-12-09 11:34 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


Attachments
Picture of how the characters are displayed (9.62 KB, image/png)
2007-07-10 18:04 UTC, z0idberg
Details

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Description z0idberg 2007-07-10 18:03:10 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.5.7)
Installed from:    Gentoo Packages
OS:                Linux

Hello,

When I switch Amarok to Japanese language, there is a minor bug. At the left bars, where you can switch between collection, file browser and so on, the strings are rotated in English and German about 90°. The same happens with Japanese. But Japanese can also be written vertically, so there is no need to rotate the entire string. It is hard to read the Characters when they are rotated 90 degrees. 

See this article to illustrate how it should look like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing_in_East_Asian_scripts

The bars at the left side are perfectly suited to display Japanese vertically (I think it should also apply to Chinese, although they usually don’t write that way any more, I think they still use it on Book covers and so on; don’t know about Korean). 

I think it could be done by maybe a little database where information is stored, which languages could be displayed in that matter (ja, zh) and if such a locale is chosen, it would not be rotated. 

This would really make this much more easier to read and use a feature of that writing systems which is perfectly suited for this kind of problem. 

Thanks
Gerrit
Comment 1 z0idberg 2007-07-10 18:04:09 UTC
Created attachment 21115 [details]
Picture of how the characters are displayed
Comment 2 Harald Sitter 2007-07-10 19:25:08 UTC
does Konqueror's sidebar actually draw the letters vertically?
Comment 3 z0idberg 2007-07-10 20:34:37 UTC
No, I also just saw that there is the same problem in Konqueror. I think it is a general kde issue then. 
Comment 4 Harald Sitter 2007-07-10 21:17:53 UTC
Well, Amarok is using a costum widget for the sidebar AFAIK, therefore the issues aren't directly related. Still, please also report the issue to Konqueror in case it isn't yet.

As for Amarok: since the widget is getting a work over for Amarok 2.0 it might be a good idea to fix this issue at the same time.
Comment 5 Harald Sitter 2007-07-10 21:18:49 UTC
woops, wrong status :S
Comment 6 Christoph Burgmer 2008-06-17 21:14:27 UTC
This is definitely a (localisation-)bug as you don't rotate some scripts.
Here's some paper to read: http://unicode.org/notes/tn22/
Comment 7 Lydia Pintscher 2008-08-19 20:57:00 UTC
Someone please check if this is still a problem in Amarok 2.
Comment 8 Gary Steinert 2008-11-19 07:32:12 UTC
Although I couldn't read Japanese to save my life, or in general tell you which way the characters are meant to be, looking at the screenshot it seems that the characters are still rotated and not drawn vertically.

Interestingly, the text on both the 'Internet' and 'FIles' tabs are in English, is this a translation issue, or a bug?

Gary
Comment 9 Dan Meltzer 2008-12-03 22:53:45 UTC
This still is a bug.

However, I don't even have the slightest clue of how we'd go about fixing it without having messy code.  I think that ideally this would be implemented at the kdelibs level (or even qt) where we could have a drawVerticalText method, or a isWrittenVertically() method.  For us to fix it in Amarok would require keeping an up to date list of which languages would like to be written vertically, and special casing it in the code.  Definately not something I'm a fan of doing.
Comment 10 Jonas Vejlin 2009-04-25 21:12:21 UTC
Should this be clouse becouse it is field against 1.4 with is unmaintained?
Comment 11 Myriam Schweingruber 2009-08-13 11:09:07 UTC
Changing severity to make this show up in our query.
Comment 12 Lydia Pintscher 2009-08-13 11:14:28 UTC
we no longer have a sidebar...