Re: [developers] Arabic shaping and reversing

[Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug dot org>]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 11:52:22AM +0000, Meitham Jamaa wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am new to the list so I am not sure this is the right place to ask.
> 
> We are working on adding Arabic support for ReportLab (our opensource python-based pdf library). We
>   would like to rely on calling a library that supports Arabic shaping (and character revering)
> than inventing this in our library.
> 
> Some contributors have submitted batches to the reportlab-users list with working code that can
> print Hebrew and Arabic using PyFriBidi, however some users said that batch could not do Farsi (or
> Pashto) shaping. Here is the thread for that conversation
> http://two.pairlist.net/pipermail/reportlab-users/2009-November/008992.html
> 
> We have also looked at the PyICU library but we could not figure out if the layout engine binding
> to ICU4C has been implemented or not.
> 
> I'm wondering if anyone on this list has any experience with a good library that can handle the
> shaping for us, or has any suggestion or recommendation.

HarfBuzz[1] would be the most sensible option for you. However, the
current library have no python bindings (the next version which is
undergoing a rewrite had a preliminary python bindings[2]).

[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/HarfBuzz
[2] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/harfbuzz/2009-December/000497.html

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer