Re: farsi. farsi! farsi? farsi:

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at cs dot toronto dot edu> wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> Roozbeh's and mine are in LGPL.  (Roozbeh?).  It means all the
> library code.  The keymap is in public domain.  The font, is
> based on Dmitry Bokhovityanov's VGA font that I have donated
> Arabic glyphs.  There are some mapping tables and other stuff in
> fonts dir done by me, that are in public domain.  You can check
> the license using Google.  Remains the hard part:
> 
> The code I borrowed from script(1), which is the skeleton of
> farsi/fcon/fcon.c, has a "BSD with advertisement clause" license.
> You need to read it yourself and read through fsf.org to find out
> what we can do.  I guess it should remain in that dirty kind of
> BSD license forever.  No problem, can still link to the LGPLed
> library.
> 
> One way is to cut my code out of that and place it in a GPLed
> container, that the Akka project should already have.  It's just
> a simple master/slave pty layer.  My code is the highly commented
> part in farsi/fcon/fcon.c -- lines 200 to 350.  I mean this is
> the part that is just my code, and the engine of the bidi
> terminal itself.  The rest is very easy to find or reimplement.

First and foremost - Thank you Behdad for taking the time to write
such a complete email addressing all the points that had been raised
so far - seriously, thank you !!  As you noted, Arabeyes would really
love to use this code in lieu of current Akka.

So let me echo back what I read in terms of what we need to do to get
traction on this topic and get people rolling (let me know if I erred
or missed something),

 1. Make the new upcoming code completely LGPL (or equivalent).
    That requires that we,
    a. Get Roozbeh's comments on his code (and his OK and blessing :-)
    b. Remove the "BSD with advertisement clause" by removing and
       re-implementing the code that was borrowed from script(1).

 2. Add license info and upload to Arabeyes' CVS.
    <minor> In terms of name - I'm all for Akka 2.0.  Behdad's
            rational is very logical (Akka 1.x was based on Acon
            and that was noted in a README file somewhere, Akka 2.x
            will be based on "Farsi/FarsiStuff" and that will be
            noted in a README file - a mention that Akka 1.x existed,
            but is now deprecated would also help).
    </minor>

 3. Verify that 'fjoining/*.i' contain the most recent and complete
    tables (check with Roozbeh and verify Arabic content).

 4. Add and update font maps and keymaps (eg. keymap/isiri2901.kmap.gz)

 5. Remove any external dependencies on python or similar by reverting
    all mini-scripts to the bourne shell ('sh').

 6. Add autotools to the entire package.

 7. Investigate more possible fonts and font-replacements.

 8. Release code :-)

I believe Mr. Muhammad Alkarouri has noted that he'll be looking into
#1 above (the "biggie") and I'm sure he would love to get some help,
so chime-in if you are interested in helping.  The sooner we get this
done the sooner this topic is put to rest, the happier we all are ;-)

Samy, I'm sure you can help, do please see what you can do.

Salam all.

 - Nadim


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