Fwd: Re: mined - a utf-8 editor

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

Just got this, since 'developer' is a closed-list (ie. only subscribers
can post), here it is.

 - Nadim

--- mined towo net wrote:
> From: mined towo net
> CC: mined towo net
> To: Nadim Shaikli
> Subject: Re: mined - a utf-8 editor
> CC: developer arabeyes org
> Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 22:58:27 +0200
> 
> Hello Nadim,
>
> > I'd come across mined (a UTF-8 supporting editor) awhile back (April I
> > think) and had contacted the author about some questions/changes - that's
> > the short of how I'm involved and why I'm e-mailing this.  I'd wanted
> > to share the info and to let those on 'developer' out there looking for
> > a challange to step forward and either hack the added Arabic support or
> > to lobby for it :-).  I'm not sure how interested Thomas (mined's author)
> > is in listening to us, but hey there is no harm in asking (again :-)
>
> I'm certainly interested in listening and also in doing something if 
> it turns out to be feasible.
> 
> > I'm including the two issues (note second email below) that I saw were
> > paramount for me to get mined working with Arabic (plus it would simplify
> > life for others).
> > 
> > How can I use mined eventhough it has no shaping or bidi support ?  Well,
> > simple -- use mlterm (mlterm.sf.net).  mlterm will do all your shaping
> > as well as bidi (bi-directionality), thus the only thing that needs to
> > be done is a way to be able to enter Arabic via the keyboard (ie. the
> > need for an Arabic keyboard mapping).
>
> I have downloaded, compiled and tried mlterm. I invoked it with 
> --km=UTF-8 or -E UTF-8 as the manual page says but it refuses to 
> operate in UTF-8 mode. It inputs 8-bit ISO Latin-1 and it outputs 
> nothing for non-ASCII characters. This thing seems to be quite broken.
> 
> > Note: most, if not all, Arabic supporting (and utf-8) editors out there
> >       have their own keymaps (emacs, katoob, vim, yudit, etc).
>
> I knew that at least some do that but I am not really familiar with it 
> and as I had written I would actually assume that the terminal 
> environment should take care about it. But anyway - if you point me to 
> a reference on how exactly the keymap should work (mapping and 
> switching methods for Arabic and other languages) I would be willing 
> to implement this.
> 
> Also, please not that the default mode of mined is a sort of 
> "poor man's right-to-left", meaning that it produces right-to-left 
> appearance on terminals that do not know anything about right-to-left.
> This can only work together with internal right-to-left ordering of 
> the text in the file (it's basically input support) which is not 
> the preferred way of handling text files in regular right-to-left 
> applications if I understood various comments correctly - please tell 
> me what you think about it. Mined can be switched to work with a 
> right-to-left terminal with the -b option. I would expect it to 
> work with mlterm then - if only mlterm would work at all...
> 
> Kind regards,
> Thomas Wolff
> 
> 
> > On Tue, 6 Aug 2002 18:46:17 +0200 (MEST),
> >   Thomas Wolff (mined at towo dot net) wrote:
> > > 
> > > Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> > > >
> > > > For instance, if I wanted to enter Arabic characters into mined, what
> > > > should I do and to go about it ?
> > > 
> > > Mined does not support its own keyboard mappings because that is 
> > > basically the task of the terminal environment (e.g. xterm variant) 
> > > or even the operating system or window system (X).  So if you work
> > > with Arabic text, you should use a terminal or a keyboard driver
> > > that supports Arabic character input by some appropriate means. This
> > > approach also has the advantage that keyboard-character mappings do
> > > not become application-proprietary.  Mined does have, however, support
> > > for input of single Unicode characters.  I will update the manual with
> > > a better overview.
> > > 
> > > ...
> > > 
> > > Also, there is implicit right-to-left support such that Arabic text 
> > > entered on a normal terminal will be written from right to left.


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