VIM-6 & Arabic - let's start

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

Here is the preliminary info relating to VIM-6 & Arabic (www.vim.org)

As noted, we need to add shaping (among other things) to VIM for it
to be a proper Arabeyes'd 8) tool.  VIM's maintainer had been
very helpful (he does ask us all to be very familiar with the
user manual though :-)

For those that don't know, VIM accepts all of VI's commands - if
you know how to use vi, you know how to use VIM.

Here are the instructions to see how far along VIM-6 already is,

Download:
 - from http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/vim/unreleased/unix
   + vim-6.0at.tar.bz2
     *or* (to download smaller bunches)
   + vim-6.0at-rt1.tar.gz       (runtime-1)
   + vim-6.0at-rt2.tar.gz       (runtime-2)
   + vim-6.0at-sr1.tar.gz       (source-1)
   + vim-6.0at-sr2.tar.gz       (source-2)

 - from http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/vim/unreleased/extra
   + vim-6.0at-extra.tar.gz
   + vim-6.0at-lang.tar.gz

 - from http://www.arabeyes.org/~nadim	(nothing worth CVS _yet_ :-)
   + vim-hack.tar.gz

Install minor arab hacks:
 - go to an empty dir (say ~/vim-arab-hack)
 - run this csh command (to ease life later)
   $ setenv ARA_HACK `pwd`
 - gunzip vim-hack.tar.gz
 - tar xvf vim-hack.tar

Compilation of VIM-6:
 - untar all vim files from above
 - cp $ARA_HACK/arabic* path_to_your_vim_dir/runtime/keymap/
 - run configure with the following two options included
   $ configure  --enable-multibyte --with-features=big
 - do make, blah, blah

Running:
 - Run the following commands
   $ xset fp+ $ARA_HACK                 # path noted above
   $ xset fp rehash
   $ xset -q                            # (optional) to see the new path
 - start graphical vim ('vim -g')
 - within vim do the following
   :set keymap=arabic
   :set guifont=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-160-75-75-c-80-iso8859-6
    *or*
   :set guifont=akka-font-position-ignostic
   :set encoding=utf-8
 - press 'i' (as in vi) to insert
 - while in insert mode press CTRL-^ (toggles between "lang" which in this
   instance is Arabic [noted on bottom of page] and english)
   you are now in arabic mode (type something)
 - to   set right-to-left (r2l) mode
   :set rightleft
 - to unset right-to-left (r2l) mode (ie. go back to normal)
   :set norightleft
 - FOR HELP
   :help
 - to quit
   :q!

If that doesn't work for ya let me know.

I __truly__ hope that this gives you a glimpse of how close we already
are to getting a common/popular tool Arabized.  With that said, let's
get going and coordinate on actions/tasks.

Without YOUR help we're not gonna get anywhere....

 - Nadim


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