Re: fribidi & arabic shaping

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at arabeyes dot org> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 22, 2002 at 04:24:09PM -0800, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> > 
> > I appreciate you taking this off-line, its best if we have a common stance
> > regarding issues.  As for what I'm getting at -- I agree with you 100% that
> > pango could and will do the job.  The point is that not many people out
> > there
> 
> 
> If this is not a question of feasibility and just a desirable option, I
> find no merit in it. I understand that asking authors to adopt FriBiDi
> and Pango is more difficult than requesting one or the other.

It is both - feasible in that you get all applications that have fribidi
in them already supporting arabic shaping for free (which is desirable).

> However, most developers would rather include something that is
> comprehensive as opposed to something that serves one language or the
> other. Pango does a lot more than just Arabic, and that is why it is the
> way to go for anyone who wants to i18n their application.

They will include Fribidi whether it has Arabic or not and so why not
piggy-back it on - I fail to see how there are any negative connotations
to this.

> To conclude, we would be doing the world a disservice by pushing for
> fribidi to have Arabic shaping while instead we should be pushing for
> Pango.

I thought we were after arabizing linux as apposed to internationalizing
it.  Are we doing the Arabic World a disservice by not asking for (and
even heavily lobbying for) its inclusion ?

The way I look at it, the more options and the more arabic inclusion
in everything - the better.

 - Nadim


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