Localising/Converting to English

From OESF

Revision as of 04:27, 10 October 2007

Localising/Converting to English

The C3000 comes in Japanese only by default. The irony of this is that Qtopia and most of Linux were developed in English, and Sharp had to change it all to Japanese, and we have to change it all back again. This makes changing the Zaurus back into English rather simple except for a few applications that were written in Japanese. There are several approaches to switch back into English only mode, and there are even some scripts out there that automate the whole process. I consider the Japanese a bonus so no way am I going to get rid of it. (Ever tried to add Japanese support to an older Windows version?)

Switching back to English (quick and dirty):

Launch the terminal and change the /home/zaurus/Settings/locale.conf file to use 'en' instead of 'ja'.

[Language]
Language = en
[Location]
Timezone = Australia/Sydney

Reboot the Zaurus.

Localising to English but keeping Japanese:

(English menus, mixed Japanese and English titles)

The goal of this localisation is to keep all the Japanese functionality but have English menu items and mixed Japanese and English display of tab entries. Japanese input method, fonts and dictionary will not be affected by this customisation and will still work afterwards.

• su
• cd /home/QtPalmtop/i18n/ja
• mkdir .hide
• mv *.qm* .hide
• mv .hide/libjpn* .
• cp /home/zaurus/Documents/custom/movieplayer.qmid .
• chown root:qpe movieplayer.qmid
• chmod 640 movieplayer.qmid
• cd /home/QtPalmtop/i18n/en
• cp /home/zaurus/Documents/custom/movieplayer.qmid .
• cp /home/zaurus/Documents/custom/libsl.qmid .
• chown root:qpe *.qmid
• chmod 640 *.qmid
• cd /home/QtPalmtop/bin
• mv word-eucJP.rc word-eucJP.rc.hide
• cd /home/QtPalmtop
• tar cf apps-orig.tar apps
• cp /home/zaurus/Documents/custom/apps-mod.tar .
• tar xf apps-mod.tar
• chown -R root:qpe apps
• cd /home/QtPalmtop
• tar cf etc-orig.tar etc
• cp /home/zaurus/Documents/custom/etc-mod.tar .
• tar xf etc-mod.tar
• chown -R root:qpe apps
• cd /home/zaurus
• tar cf Settings-orig.tar Settings
• cp /home/Zaurus/Documents/custom/Settings-mod.tar .
• tar xf Settings-mod.tar
• cd Settings
• chown zaurus:qpe *.conf
• chmod 644 *.conf

This package [c3000-custom-jaen_0.1_arm.ipk] will do the above and is what I use to recover my localisation if I need to reset my Zaurus to factory setting and start again. This package is not reversable. You will need [c3000-custom-jaen_0.2_arm.ipk] to be able to uninstall and switch back.

Some applications that you install after the localisation will still appear in Japanese, but most of those can be easily localised as well by looking under the /home/QtPalmtop/i18n/ja directory and if there is an additional qm file named after the application you installed there, simply move it into the .hide directory. However, some applications are written natively in Japanese and cannot be easily localised. I have created [langswitch_0.1_arm.ipk] which will allow you to move the qm files back and fro from the GUI (it requires opie-sh).

If you want Netfront to be able to display German umlauts, French accents, and other special characters in addition to the standard English characters and Japanese characters, change /hdd2/Applications/netfront3/prefs and find an entry FontFamilyJa:. Add or modify FontFamilyEn: and set it to a font such as verdana that contains the extended character sets. The following font package is recommended: mico-unicodefonts-verdana_1.5.0-1_arm.ipk

FontFamilyEn: verdana
FontFamilyJa: lcfont