Re: Unicode and Arabic

[Muhammad Alkarouri <malkarouri at yahoo dot co dot uk>]

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 15:19 +0100, Youcef Rabah Rahal wrote:
[...]
> I have been on the bidi list for one week now. You'll probably get an
> email from the list admin asking how did you know about the list and
> what are your qualifications etc, before he accepts your subscription.
> Sounds like a formality but I'm not really sure.

Thanks, actually my subscription has been accepted now. Without any
further e-mail.

> 
> > I would add that we need to get more educated ourselves. We have some people
> > who are 'in the know', so please give us some links. May be somebody adds a
> > wiki page?
> 
> Can't agree more. It's a good start that 'we' subscribe to those
> lists. But like I told Nadim on IRC, we more than ever need
> specialists of the language and its history to join and not only
> computer scientists. Please note that on their lists there are real
> experts who have a background and access to documents etc. If you are
> to discuss important topics (such as the directionality of
> numbers...), you better first ask experts (and ulitmately ask them to
> join the discussion). However, I presume there should be no real
> problems in discussing technical details (first we need to get more
> educated ourselves like Muhammad is noting).

Totally agree. The problem is that in our community there is little
overlap between the domain experts (linguists, etc) and those with
technical background (comp.sci). We need to make that bridge, in the
sense that I should be able to participate in the lists and know what to
ask an expert about. Or I find a linguist that knows enough about
computer science to translate to me whatever questions he wants
answered.
I believe we (Arabeyes) can make that bridge. And we will get experts,
when the bridge is built. Seems to me easier than getting ourselves
educated in Linguistics, to a post grad level.

By the way, I would be thankful if you can augment any links or info to
the page http://wiki.arabeyes.org/UnicodeNotes as that's the least we
can do.

> 
> I may be wrong, but it seems to me that linguists and such in the Arab
> world don't have much access (or are not interested?) to those 'new
> technology' topics. It's also scary that no Arab gov out there seem to
> be interested either.
> 

As an aside, notice that the overlap in the west between the computer
scientists and linguists are much higher than average even for other
western scientists, as they have language processing as common ground.
Natural language processing and compiler design have the same roots, and
speech processing attracts both parties. Chomsky will almost pass as a
computer scientist. So I wouldn't be surprised if some of those on the
unicode lists are of PhD+ standard on both comp.sci and linguistics.
In short, we have some time to reach that status. Meanwhile, we need to
involve as much Arabic experts from both sides as possible.
As for Arab governments, they have other fish to fry (be fried:)

> Anyway, there have already been some emails from experts on this list.
> I hope they can join and give their input on the unicode lists too.
> Also, we sure need someone or two with the required technical
> knowledge volunteering to set up a wiki page. I suppose all the
> knowledge is out there, so I guess a simple wiki page with links to
> expalin where and how to start would be desirable.

I don't think I have the required knowledge, but I will try to help.
Please put any links you have on the wiki page Unicode Notes, then I can
massage them. Obviously we need a better name than Unicode Notes..

Salam,
Muhammad Alkarouri