Bidi + PuTTY - done

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

Simon, we are done including Bidi into PuTTY (thanks Ahmad Khalifa for
all your hard work and continued perseverance) and we are proud to
say that we are done with phase-1 of the process (the phases will be
explained later).  The binary .exe has been used by a number of people
over the past week+ without any loss in functionality.  The added
functionality is also completely disable-able if one chooses to do so
(for whatever reason) via dialog buttons (Terminal->Features).

  http://www.toomuchcookies.net/~arabeyes/putty-6.6.exe

Ahmad has written his own Bidi code (as is evident from Arabeyes' CVS
repository and the README file) to get this done.  A great deal of what
is left requires expert PuTTY knowledge (ie. Simon) so we tried to break
things down into smaller pieces to better focus on issues and to try to
work out a reasonable schedule (the patch, though, is ready to go and is
ready for inclusion).

  http://cvs.arabeyes.org/viewcvs/projects/external/putty/

This is our plan (ie. what we envision doing),

  + Phase-1     (DONE)
    - Add Bidi and shaping within putty

  + Phase-2     (requires help/direction from Simon)
    - Fix visual space after combined character (LAM+ALEF -> LAA)
    - Fix cut-n-paste issues (selection should undergo Bidi as well)

  + Phase-3     (requires help/direction from Simon)
    - Look into and properly handle Control/Escape sequences
    - vim/emacs/etc should run properly within putty with Arabic

  + Phase-4     (might require help/direction from Simon)
    - Fix composing characters (fatha/damma/etc)
    - Misc. bug fixes

So at this point what is in the patch allows the user to view
(via cat/more/less/etc) Arabic properly and it does _not_ depend
on any windows or external functions (ie. it does everything we've
set out to do :-).  We sincerely hope to hear from you sooner rather
than later to get this patch accepted and to continue on our quest
for perfection as outlined above.

Do please note that even if none of the other phases are completed,
the patch as it stands now is EXTREMELY useful and should be included
ASAP.

PS: with regards to be being busy, etc.  Do please simply
    let us know when to expect a reply from ya so we can
    plan accordingly (and not keep bothering you :-)

Regards,

 - Nadim


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