Re: Help with creating Arabic Language support

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Ron Ravid <ronravid at gmail dot com> wrote:
> I hope you don`t mind getting this bothering massage.

I almost never answer private emails now (I'm CC'ing Arabeyes'
"general" mailing-list).  Keep in mind future private exchanges
won't be replied-to.

> I wish to add Arabic support to some device that I work with. I
> already added Hebrew support. now I wish to add support for Arabic.
> I will try to start with a map of this letter:
> 
> - My background and situation.
> - My resources
> - What I need
> 
> My background and situation.
> =====================
> There is a Tool that is used to help in repairs. I translated it from
> English into Hebrew. Now I wish to to make a translation from English
> to Arabic. I do not know much of Arabic (back then in school I was too
> lazy), but I remember the basics. The translation itself will be done
> by one of my Arab friends. All I have to do is to convert the
> translated files. The tool only display text, no writing in Arabic is
> needed. So all I need is to find a standard map of Arabic fonts, That
> includes all the shapes of every letter. Then I can finish a
> conversion program. The Program take the normal output of notepad with
> stand-alone only, and convert the codes to the relevant form (initial,
> medial, final or stand-alone)
> In addition I have to get the font for it (Bitmap font)

I hope the tool you mention above is under open source license :-)

> My resources:
> =========
> - Windows 98 in Arabic - useful to understand the editor and save formats
> - File Arabi.com - allow to use Arabic on any computer with dos. If I
>   had document with it`s font map i might be able to use it.
> - code page 864 files and Kostis Character Encoding Tools.

The only encodings we support/use/condone is UTF-8 and alot of us are not
windows users and those that venture on it don't do any development work
there.  To convert your files use 'iconv'.

> What I need:
> =========
> - Arabic bitmap font 8*16 (8*8 and 16*16 will be useful too)

See if there is something you can use (to convert from) from our
khotot project [1].

> - Arabic text editor that can save in the displayed format instead of
>   the "stand-alone letter codes only".

This is a hack that you are not likely to find support for since it goes
against almost everything we've been forced/taught to do.  Do look into
the following editors though (they might help),

 - http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html
 - http://www.towo.net/mined

> OR
> Information needed to do this conversion by myself.

You can enter the actual glyph codes using say vim (do ':help' within vim)
using unicode's charts [2] as a guide.  I'm also sure there is an easier
way to do this, I simply don't know of any readily.

You should really get the tool you are dealing with properly localized
using GNU's very popular gettext tools [3] (that is what ~90% of the
open source applications are using).

[1] http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Khotot
[2] http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0600.pdf
    http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFE70.pdf
[3] http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/
    http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_mono/gettext.html

Regards,

 - Nadim



		
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