Printing Arabic UTF-8 text

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

Salam all...

We have a couple of command-line printing options available now :-)

1. I've been fortune enough to patch the latest development version
   of txtbdf2ps.pl in order to include both bidi and Arabic shaping.

     http://oldrus-ispell.sourceforge.net/txtbdf2ps.html

   I've contacted the author of txtbdf2ps.pl to include the code to
   the main trunk so hopefully that will happen at some point.

   In the meanwhile, you can download the script here,

     http://www.arabeyes.org/cvsweb/projects/external/txtbdf2ps/txtbdf2ps.pl

   Some common examples on how to use it,

   # If you do    have fribidi in your path
   $ txtbdf2ps.pl -UTF-8
                  -bidi
                  -bdf=/PATH/PATH/PATH/10x20.bdf -text=arabic_file > output.ps

   # If you don't have fribidi in your path
   $ txtbdf2ps.pl -UTF-8
                  -fribidi=/PATH/PATH/fribidi
                  -bdf=/PATH/PATH/PATH/10x20.bdf -text=arabic_file > output.ps

   Then simply print the output.ps postscript file
   $ lpr output.ps

   Enjoy :-)

2. After both Anas Nashif and Sherif Dessouki independently hinted at
   looking at yudit's uniprint.  I wanted to note this 'hack' eventhough
   it really isn't a complete/clean solution (for a clean solution Yudit
   will need to fully support unicode's Bidi algorithm -- help is needed
   in making this (fribidi+yudit) happen !!)

   NOTE: TrueType fonts promise better quality and versatility compared
         to BDF.

   + Download yudit & compile/install it
       http://www.yudit.org/
   + Download the Arabic shaping perl script (shape_arabic.pl)*
       http://www.arabeyes.org/cvsweb/tools/shape_bidi/shape_arabic.pl
   + $ shape_arabic.pl -f arabic_file |
       fribidi |
       uniprint -font /path/path/courbd.ttf -out output.ps

   (*) this perl script notes how easy Arabic shaping really is and ought
       to serve as an example for those looking to learn perl.

NOTE: if you don't have a printer, you will still be able to see the
      postscript output via a postscript viewer like 'ghostview'

Lastly, I would like to note that there aren't that many options out there
for printing UTF-8 encoded text from the command-line.  'a2ps' surprisingly
doesn't even support utf-8 which we should try to either modify and pressure
for.  The lack of utf-8 support has and will continue to harm us and as such
I ask all to always lobby for it.

Enjoy and I make the same plea - your help is much needed, so get involved
and get to coding and producing results :-)

Salam...

 - Nadim


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