Re: OpenOffice & Arabic

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at arabeyes dot org>]

On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 11:17:10AM -0700, Nadim Shaikli wrote:

> Its nothing important (or worth mentioning :-), I just saw the article
> and remembered my need to revisit this topic in search of a resolution.
> 
>   http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,427069,00.asp
> 

Ah.. I searched for something that was 'recent' and 'prompting' this post, or
so it seemed to imply.

> Any comments otherwise ?
> 

Follows..

> I know that there was a patch created by IBM that was rejected due
> to license issues and such (the patch's "Bidi Architect" Matitiahu
> Allouche (matial -at- il.ibm.com) noted in mid May, "there [seems
> to be] a misunderstanding between IBM and Sun regarding reception
> of a copyright agreement"); the patch is attainable at,

Yes, and it will not be used, period. Sun are writing their own
implementation. Anything toward getting the pre-existing patches included is
in my opinion a waste of time. At least I have no interest in meddling with
their beurucratic problems.

Last I corresponded with Dieter Loeschky (dieter.loeschky (at)
germany.sun.com), who was pretty determined to write their own
implementation. He said they were close to finishing it, and that was some
time ago.. I would be interested to know what happened since.

>  + There was a group of Tunisian students (as posted on Arabeyes) that was
>    working on arabizing the interface (localization/i18n work) - yet, I'm
>    not sure if they are in contact with anyone; they are not noted on
>    OpenOffice's localization page either.

I have tried to no avail to get a hold of them. I have gotten one response
from the professor they worked under, but it was a one-liner and did not have
any kind of concrete content. I have given up on that being a real project.
> 
> Any comments before contacting Mati and OpenOffice's mailing-lists
> regarding this topic ?  It seems like a shame to simply drop this patch
> due to some bureaucracy/misunderstanding without at least a fight ;-)
> 

I would instead recommend you contact the Sun folks and see what the status is
of their implementation, and what needs to be done for it. Mati may have some
insight or ideas and could possibly prove helpful, but I don't think trying 
to get IBM's patches included will result in anything worthwhile.

later
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