Re: xiterm-0.4 & arabic

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Jiro SEKIBA <jir yamato ibm com> wrote:
> At Tue, 26 Nov 2002 16:49:02 -0800 (PST), Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> 
> >  1. Is there a dynamic means to set direction based on the Bidi
> >     algorithm ?  It seems what you mailed was statically set to 
> >     either Right-to-Left (RTL) or Left-to-Right (LTR).  It would
> >     be ideal if the appropriate lines showed according to their
> >     own setting -- I will attach the same file using mlterm to
> >     show a difference.
> 
> Orientation (Global direction) is not based on Bidi algorithm.  It's
> just like property of the iterm like a reverse video.  But of course, 
> in either orientation, English test will be displayed from Left to
> Right and Arabic text will be displaced from Right to Left.
> 
> As you mentioned that mlterm takes different way, I realized.  I have
> no idea which way is good for you guys or maybe it's depend on the
> situation.  I think I can add the behavior like mlterm.

Well, my personal opinion is that the way mlterm displays text seems
rather natural (having the option to do it statically is always nice
too :-), I'm CC'ing this email to arabeyes.org to get more reactions
(do note that posts to either email-lists requires one to be
subscribed, but all emails on arabeyes are viewable in the archives;
sorry for the jab - I don't get the logic behind hiding the email
archives :-)

> >  2. There seems to be a minor discrepancy between the LTR & the
> >     RTL on one of the lines (the tanween/harakat characters don't
> >     seem to show on the RTL) -- note the difference on the second
> >     line below the string "Some Arabic fragment examples" (the
> >     second line that starts with a dash '-').
> 
>  Ah, this must be a bug ;-)  It can be a good bug test case, thanks.

I'll try to add more variants and mail them to you privately.  The test
file wasn't meant to be a test vehicle, but it sure would be nice if it
turned that way :-)

> > Overall, great work - can't wait to actually get it to running :-)
> 
> Thanks.  Please note that in order to display CTL text, you need
> layout engine, which is like a libfribidi.  iterm supports fribidi
> and PLS library.  I'm using PLS library of IBM.  It's now a part of
> OpenMotif?  Or you may use SUN's PLS library, which you can get 
> from li18nux CVS repository just like iterm and the module name is
> `liblayout' :-).

I guess I'll get to that once I'm able to compile xiterm on solaris
hopefully soon :-)  I remember reading that shaping is not included
in xiterm under fribidi (since fribidi doesn't do it itself, right ?)
where-as PLS does ?

> > It also seems (from the screenshot) that you can cut-n-paste to the
> > command-line; is that so ?  Any quirks with bash/tcsh ?
> 
> Yes, I cut-n-pasted highlighted text into command line :-).  I think
> i18n enabled bash (bash-2.05b or later) can handle the text correctly.
> Ah, maybe have some problem with ligature when wrapping.

Cool, this is something that mlterm doesn't do at this point (I'll
contact its author), so now we should have a "normal" means to rename
Arabic filenames on the command-line (well kinda, more below :-)

Out of curiosity, so one can cut-n-paste onto the command-line, can
one write Arabic on the command-line (ie. switch to an Arabic keymap ?)
In other words, if I wanted to do say "vi ARABIC_NAME_HERE" would I
be able to _write_ that filename in Arabic ?  If not, could that be
added ?

Thanks again.

 - Nadim


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