Re: Mad idea

[abdulhaq <al-arabeyes at alinsyria dot fsnet dot co dot uk>]

On Friday 11 June 2004 20:37, Ahmad Khalifa wrote:

> Then why not just patch xfs ?
> I personally didnt understand most of your ideas but, i'd be willing to
> help, if you need it.
>
>

I think you need to read Thomas's pdf(s). He argues that current arabic 
rendering techniques on computers is fundamentally flawed because it 
(simplifying greatly and generalising) renders one glyph at a time, and also 
the nuqaaT/dots are built into the glyph rather than added after rendering 
the word (sometimes leading to overlapping or confusing nuqaaT).

The apparent answer is to build an arabic script renderer which takes entire 
words or even sentences and renders them in a much improved way. He has 
developed a program called ACE (which I know nothing about) that appears to 
address a number of these issues but is fundamentally constrained by the 
machinations of Windows. It is also a proprietary product.

Your help and skills would be greatly appreciated. I think the 'madness :-)' 
needs to be taken out first by thrashing out the ideas with anyone who is 
interested - as many as possible.

As to patching xfs, I suppose I am sort-of talking about that, but I think it 
would be better to have a rendering server that drew on features of xfs 
rather than the other way around. Client programs (to xfs) such as Qt would 
have to be modified anyway to pass data by word and not character, so 
preserving an xfs-type interface isn't possible (I think).

I must stress this is just blue-sky thinking at the moment but it would be 
great if after consideration we could do something. I don't want to start, 
though, without thinking that it's possible to ultimately deliver something 
good.

wassalaam
abdulhaq