mlterm - the holy grail :-)

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

It is with great honor and privilege that I'd like to bring to your
attention and to announce the availability of an Arabic enabled, FULLY
functional terminal emulator -- yes, a fully working Arabic xterm !!!

mlterm (multi-lingual terminal emulator) has been worked-on in earnest
by Mr. Ken Araki since May 2001 and I've had the privilege and utmost
pleasure to assist him in this wonderful endeavor and adventure as of
late.  I commend Mr. Araki for his efforts, drive, professionalism,
shear responsiveness, wonderful attitude and interest in Arabic.


Q - Hmmm... What will mlterm do for me ?

 + It will allow you to view Arabic files (as well as Arabic and English
   combinational files) using 'cat', 'head', 'tail', 'less', 'more', etc
   (given that those utilities support UTF-8, which most do).
 + It will also allow you to edit files (yes, using arabic-patched vim or
   any other UTF-8 editor) while having full Bidi support along with all
   the shaping that you've come to expect; searches, string replacements,
   etc all work properly (even better than graphical vim due to Bidi's
   inclusion :-).
 + It will allow you to send and receive mail in Arabic (the headers,
   of course, will continue to be in English).  You will be able to
   send/receive email with Arabic titles as well as having Arabic text
   in the body of the mail using mutt (or any other UTF-8 supporting mailer).
 + It will allow you to enter Arabic commands (for what its worth) if you
   have the appropriate Xserver and locale set correctly (untested, but
   ought to work :-)

 In short it will give you ALL the abilities you expect from a terminal
 emulator (xterm) as long as the applications used are UTF-8 aware.

 NOTE: it might feel "odd" at first to see both Arabic and English
       rendered correctly :-) and you might not expect the cursor to
       move the way you might have thought (in vim for instance), but
       those are all things that you'll get used to in a matter of days
       and it will feel VERY natural - so don't freak, its not broken,
       its just new to ya :-)

Q - Great, how do I get it & what should I do ?

 Download the required software:
   + Download mlterm version-2.4.0 (or higher) from,
       http://mlterm.sf.net
   + Download (if you haven't already) fribidi from,
       http://fribidi.sf.net

 Compile & Install the software:
   + configure, compile & install fribidi
       $ ./configure ; make ; make install
   + make sure fribidi is in your path
       $ cd ; which fribidi      <-- should give you the correct path,
                                     if not then
                                     'set path = ($path PATH/TO/FRIBIDI)'
   + configure, compile & install mlterm
       $ ./configure --enable-fribidi ; make ; make install

 Make sure you have Arabic fonts:
   + make sure you have an ISO-10646 font file installed,
     if you don't, fetch
       http://www.arabeyes.org/download/external/vim/10x21.pcf.Z
   + install the font file
       $ cd TO/WHERE/10x21/FONT/IS/AT
       $ mkfontdir
       $ xset fp+ `pwd`
       $ xset fp rehash

 Start using mlterm :-)
   + invoke mlterm
       $ mlterm -E utf8 -w 20 &
   + to use less,
       $ setenv LESSCHARSET utf-8
       $ less file_with_arabic_in_it
     wohooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo :-)
   + read man pages of any application that doesn't seem to work
     looking for whichever settings required (regarding multibyte
     and/or UTF-8).
   + make sure to check mlterm's many options (mlterm --help)

NOTE: mlterm is constantly being improved, so on the few occasions
      where something might seem out of place (alignment, shaping,
      other anomalies), try to isolate the problem and generate a
      simple example to show the problem (CTRL-L in most applications
      does a redraw of the screen).

      To report a bug, find a reproducible occurrence of that "oddity"
      and mail it to 'mlterm-dev-en at lists dot sourceforge dot net'.  In the
      few instances where the "debug" output is required to augment a
      bug report, the following procedure should be followed,

       + configure mlterm with the "--enable-debug" option
       + enable __DEBUG and ESCSEQ_DEBUG in ./src/ml_vt100_parser.c


mlterm and its Arabic support is a highlight achievement and I once
again (out of shear appreciation for this GRAND accomplishment) would
like to thank Mr. Araki for all his help and for caring about Arabic
when so many have not (this tour de force should, at a minimum, inspire
us all to rise to the occasion in bringing forth more solutions to
bridge the Arabic, unix/linux gap)....

Best Regards & Salam,

 - Nadim


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