Soldier names and glyphs

[SupSuper]

Just wanted to draw attention to a debate going on about soldier names here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,205.0.html

Original X-Com (and other games) just have the names in standard A-Z alphabet, regardless of language, since they're global. Should we bother to make them more accurate with the proper national characters?

P.S. This is also the chance to add/improve soldier names for your own country.

[AedanClarke]

I feel it'd be more appropriate to add proper national characters in to help contribute to the feeling, no matter how minor, that XCOM is an international team. So, even if your rookie's shots aren't accurate, their names will be.

[radius75]

We should probably at least give it try it with the full list of Latin derived glyphs (French, Polish, Hungarian, etc), and exclude the Cyrillic/Japanese/Chinese/Non-Latin alfabet

@powerc80 I agree with this.

Lets stick to the standard A-Z , i have enough trouble with them

@luke83 This is not such difficult. 
Ąą, Ćć, Ęę, Łł, Ńń, Óó, Śś, Źź, Żż. (Polish)

Remember that soldier names are global (language-specific names would be a ton of work)

@SupSuper I know about this.
I propose Cyrillic/Japanese/Chinese/Non-Latin alfabet  only in language Mod.


EDIT

Alright, here are the new French soldier names.

A lot more variety than the old names...

@powerc80 is this correct French letters? (French_names.zip https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,205.msg6559.html#msg6559)
  - ╔lisabeth
  - Franńoise
  - Gķraldine
  - Vķronique
  - Pķtain
does the sign display '?'

[Volutar]

SupSuper, national letters in multilingual game? okay, how'd you suppose to read chinese names, for instance? or georgian names? which will be written in their respective alphabets..

for recap: soldier names should be witten with only 26 latin characters. National symbols are mostly unreadable. You shouldn't expect from people reading your alphabet. I don't know how to read those. I'd prefer to get "latin mod" if these "localized" names will take their place.
BTW, only "latin derived" sounds kinda offensive.

[powerc80]

EDIT@powerc80 is this correct French letters? (French_names.zip https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,205.msg6559.html#msg6559)
  - ╔lisabeth
  - Franńoise
  - Gķraldine
  - Vķronique
  - Pķtain
does the sign display '?'

The French.nam file opens fine on my computer with a standard text editor (i.e. Notepad).

Or did you try it in-game? Is that why you got those strange spellings?

Anyway radius75, here is what the file should look like: https://i.imgur.com/UipyG.png

[SupSuper]

There seems to be quite the different opinions surrounding this, so for now I'll leave all the names as A-Z for 0.4.5 and we can discuss it again afterwards.

The French.nam file opens fine on my computer with a standard text editor (i.e. Notepad).

Or did you try it in-game? Is that why you got those strange spellings?

Anyway radius75, here is what the file should look like: https://i.imgur.com/UipyG.png

It's because your files are in ANSI and OpenXcom uses UTF-8. I've fixed this on my end, for future reference, you can change this in Notepad's Save As.

[powerc80]

There seems to be quite the different opinions surrounding this, so for now I'll leave all the names as A-Z for 0.4.5 and we can discuss it again afterwards.

That sounds fine, we can hold a vote sometime later if that's what you want.

It's because your files are in ANSI and OpenXcom uses UTF-8. I've fixed this on my end, for future reference, you can change this in Notepad's Save As.

Oops, I forgot about that...

Thanks for correcting it. In the meantime SupSuper, here are the French soldier names without accents.

[Yankes]

I have one big problem with no ASCII characters, who you input them to OpenXcom? Every letter should have unique keybind.
Another problem is keyboard layouts e.g. in Poland we use "right_Alt+e" to type "ę", what happens when some other language use same combination for different character? You will be limited only to characters form you language?

[SupSuper]

I have one big problem with no ASCII characters, who you input them to OpenXcom? Every letter should have unique keybind.
Another problem is keyboard layouts e.g. in Poland we use "right_Alt+e" to type "ę", what happens when some other language use same combination for different character? You will be limited only to characters form you language?

Keyboard input is not affected by your OpenXcom options (current language etc). It's handled by SDL and should match whatever your current system layout is, so you should be able to type text like you would in any other program (eg. I can type á by pressing a+´ since I have a Portuguese keyboard layout). If not, that's a problem with SDL and nothing can be really done about it.

The only limitation is you can only type in characters available in the OpenXcom font, naturally.

[papamaanbeer]

Xcom is a global organisation, so you wil get soldiers from all over the globe. keeping it a-z is logical for the xcom admin and there are more pressing matters on there mind. stopping the alien menance!

[Solarius Scorch]

I think some threadomancy is in order, or at least forgiveable here.

So what's the status on non-English characters? Are we supposed to add them or not? Has there been a consensus on this, or any sort of decision? I would like to contribute, but I don't know what to do!

If I may speak for myself, I think non-English characters are bordering on necessary. When I see French or German names that are missing parts of letters, it looks... well, unprofessional. Semi-literate. Honestly, this looks bad. Sure, it's a very minor feature, but since we're discussing it anyway...

[SupSuper]

I think some threadomancy is in order, or at least forgiveable here.

So what's the status on non-English characters? Are we supposed to add them or not? Has there been a consensus on this, or any sort of decision? I would like to contribute, but I don't know what to do!

If I may speak for myself, I think non-English characters are bordering on necessary. When I see French or German names that are missing parts of letters, it looks... well, unprofessional. Semi-literate. Honestly, this looks bad. Sure, it's a very minor feature, but since we're discussing it anyway...

What about non-latin alphabets? Personally I'd rather leave this topic dead, as people will argue semantics until the cows come home.

[Solarius Scorch]

What about non-latin alphabets? Personally I'd rather leave this topic dead, as people will argue semantics until the cows come home.

Non-Latin alphabets are non-Latin. They can't render Latin names exactly anyway, they need to make concessions.
This topic concerns our Latin alphabet. Which contains more letters than the English language.

Frankly, I don't understand the problem at all. How do non-English characters relate to the fact that there are non-Latin alphabets? How would it hurt users who use Cyrillic or Arabic?

[xracer]

I agree we should at least try to get all latin alaphabets working,  non-latin well nothing we can do for now

[winterheart]

In my opinion, names should be translatable, but there already hundreds and hundreds names, it would be pain for translators...