Re: [PATCH] Re: Eureka! This is why Arabic support for lyx 1.3.2 doesn't work in my Mandrake 9.1

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes <Jean-Marc dot Lasgouttes at inria dot fr>]

>>>>> "Munzir" == Munzir Taha Obeid <munzirtaha at myrealbox dot com> writes:

Munzir> I don't know why the first patch to ChangeLog failed but I
Munzir> think I can ignore it safely, right?

Right. The patch failed because there have been changes in the file
since the 1.3.2 release.

Munzir> QError.lo make[5]: *** No rule to make target `QERT.C', needed
Munzir> by `QERT.lo'. Stop. make[5]: Leaving directory

Hmm, that's strange...

>> Concerning the patch, I think that it should solve the problem of
>> using arabic at the end of document, but it does not solve the
>> general problem of using formatting inside an arabic context. This
>> problem is due to the big constraints that arabtex puts on the
>> latex code that we may use.
Munzir> I am really sad to hear this. To add a newline at the end of
Munzir> the document is something which could be done by hand for Arab
Munzir> users but what about the general problem which is really
Munzir> annoying. Please, if no one can do it, I hope one, at least,
Munzir> specify guidelines in how it could be solved and what files
Munzir> need to be modified, or whether a patch needed for arabtex
Munzir> itself. May be someone at arabeyes.org could do something
Munzir> here.

The problem is that this package implements something which is not
really latex, but a subset of latex. For example, I may want to write
te\TeX (name of a famous distribution). I arabic context, this is
forbidden, and I shall write "te \TeX". This means that one should add
code in a lot of places to add spacing before _all_ macros. This is
not possible because:

- that's a lot of work
- in the non-arabic context, it will give bad output.

I think that this macro package is code that works 'by chance', when
you actually know what you do. It is very very difficult to use this
in LyX (I am sure that even if this particular problem was solved,
another one would crop up).

I think that someone (maybe the people at arabeye.org) should take a
look at this problem. I am willing to accept ``reasonable'' solutions.

JMarc