Re: a new comer !

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at fakkir dot net>]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 01:57:06AM +0200, Anas TAWILEH wrote:
> I think it's better to stick to the Unicode , because if we will confuse 
> ourselves with other encodings we will end up with a lot of unorganized 
> results ...
> 

I apologize for the late response. I've been busy with school among other
things. Anyhow, here is what we are going to do:

1. Use al-katib (of linux.org.sa) or axmedit (of langbox.com). Although
AXMedit is a more complete editor (as it has more features, etc.), I prefer
that you use Al-Katib because of its license (it is under the GPL). Which
gives us the flexibility to modify it to suit our needs.

To install al-katib, download the latest Qt library from the www.trolltech.com
site. I think the latest is Qt3 beta3. Read the ./INSTALL file after you 
untar and unzip the file for installation instructions. If you have any
problems, let us know. If we can't answer you, I'm sure the Qt development
team and mailing lists are very helpful.

You also need to downloadi:
	a. The Arabic XKB keymap file provided by the link
Majed sent (http://www.linux.org.sa/download/arabic.xkb). 
	b. You also need to download Al-Katib itself from
(http://www.linux.org.sa/projects/alkatib/aindex.html).  
	c. Download and intall fonts from LangBox Int'l (www.langbox.com) if you don't already
have them.

You then need to run xkbcomp on the arabic.xkb file:

$ xkbcomp -R/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /PATH/TO/arabic.xkb

Please note that the X11 directory may be different on your machine so just
make sure it's the xkb/ directory. Also, the PATH/TO/ arabic.xkb must be
explicitly written, regardless of your present working directory.

If you wish to use Notepad or any other editor under a different platform,
feel free to do so, as long as we maintain the same format.

2. Speaking of Unicode and fonts, we will use the Unicode format. Not only
does it make life easier, but it is what KDE uses - so we don't really have a
choice anyway.

3. The first thing to be translated will be kdelibs.pot. Download the file
from the KDE CVS. They explain how to do that on their site, if you have
problems with that let us know. We might just mirror their CVS server here,
but we will see about that. It just might be overkill ;)

So, that being said. We are going to make a system for the translators to
enable to us to work at the fastest possible speed.

	a. Editors - a group of people who will edit and review translated strings
to act as Quality Control. Those will be few, and will have to display an
excellent knowledge of the Arabic language, and a moderate level of competence
in the English language.
	
	b. Translators - the majority of the group will primarily translate .po
templates. We will begin with kdelibs.pot, and will move on to the others as we
move along (tackling the least likely to change their strings). If you are
going to work on kdelibs.pot then email contribute at arabeyes dot org and let us
know so I can figure out how many people need to work on how many po files.

Once the translation for a specific piece if complete, then you need to submit
it to contribute at arabeyes dot org where it will be put on the local cvs repository
for editors to review and edit. Once that is complete, off they go to KDE.


I hope that helps. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

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| Mohammed Elzubeir                    | http://www.fakkir.net/           |
| Tech Support                         | http://www.arabeyes.org/         |
| College of Business Computing Center | Homepage:                        |
| University of North Texas            | http://www.fakkir.net/~elzubeir/ |
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