Re: Unicode and Bidi vs Shaping

[Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh at sharif dot edu>]

On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Nadim Shaikli wrote:

> Roozbeh/Behdad, thank you VERY much for keeping us abreast [...]

You're welcome!

> Last I remember, there was a cost involved.

Well, then I suggest this: Incorporate yourself, as a corporation, a
consortium, a society, or best of all, a non-profit organization. Include
general Arabic standardization in computers in your Rules of
Establishment/Incorporation. Then try for a liaison membership.

I guess this has a lower cost than doing it the other way. The cose is 
merely reaching a consensus on how to incorporate.

> > That'll be the thing that we are going to implement in FriBidi also.
> 
> Excellent - this is the best news I've heard in ages :-)

Well, or in a separate library for joining that collaborates with FriBidi. 

You'll get it anyway, as LGPL-compatible Free Software, and
*standard-compliant* in that regard, which means that I prefer not to see
more bug reports on Alef Maksura being dual-joining in some random
software that will use that joining library. Arabeyes is either on the
sane road (i.e. fighting each war in its own front, e.g. Alef Maksura in
the Unicode front) or the insane road (fixing all problems locally instead
of in the standards, that may sadly separate us).

> Again, many _many_ thanks for the inclusion 

You're welcome! (Have I told this previously, or is it just deja vu? ;))

> We've all realized of late that we need to play a bigger role in that
> arena and need an intimate understanding of the algorithm.

Let's pray for that. We need your help a lot. We're getting very busy in
non-technical matters, like the managorial aspects of a national Linux
project. Actually we tried very hard to meet the Unicode meeting deadline.

roozbeh