Re: fribidi + joining/shaping

[Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh at sharif dot edu>]

On Wed, 25 Dec 2002, Nadim Shaikli wrote:

> So if there are documents/ideas/etc that you guys (Roozbeh & Behdad) have
> and are sharing and talking about, we'd love to see them and help out;

OK, we will post the document here when it emerged.

> its only logical for all of us to work together (the more eyes, the more
> brains the better).

You are definitely right, but even even I have problems understanding the
complications of Bidi. And specially since ZWNJ and ZWJ are involved in
the game (which are rare in Arabic), honestly, I don't think Arabeyes
people will be able to help much.

> we'll gladly do extra homework to catchup given a bit of guidance.

OK, Homework 1:

Study the Unicode 3.0 section on Arabic thoroughly. Check Unicode 3.1 and
3.2 to see the changes that has been made to it. Try to understand *every*
detail, specially the notion of character sequence <ZWNJ, ZWJ, ZWNJ>.

Homework 2:

Suggest re-wordings to make these more clear. Best comments will be 
collected and sent to Unicode editors to be incorporated in Unicode 4.0.

Homework 3:

Study the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm. Think about possible problems 
that may rise in interactions between Bidi and Joining, specially ZWNJ and 
ZWJ, and Arabic text in overridden Left-to-Right mode.

> As for joining Unicode - we'll be talking internally about the Liaison
> option (or whatever it was called - the one that didn't cost anything),

Please do so. CC me in case of any difficulties. I have just met some of 
the Unicode officers, and may be able to provide some help.

> Your sponsorship deal, I must admit, sounds very appealing (you guys
> must be good negotiators :-)

We can try that, but being a member of Bidi doesn't help much if you can't
access the L2/UTC document repository which is password-protected and only
for members. You will see people discussing some number referring to a 
document, and get into more confusions.

> Thanks again for your info and let's start sharing/working on this topic
> together; sound reasonable ?

Sure. But the sad point is that Behdad is changing his opinion everyday ;)

BTW, just out of curiosity, how many people here are members of the
"unicode at unicode dot org" mailing list?

roozbeh