Re: hijri date in kde (korganizer)

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

On Thu, 22 Aug 2002 00:00:16 +0200,
  "Amin Moro" <cfmoro correo uniovi es> wrote:
> 
> I paste all the names, located in hconv.c . Could you check them? (Sorry for 
> being such a long message) . Then I'll correct as you tell me.
> 
> const char      *dow[]= {
>          "Yaumul Ithnain", " Yaumu Zulatha", " Yaumul Arbi'a",
>          "Yaumul Khamees", "Yaumul Jumma", "Yaumu Sabt", "Yaumul Ahad"
> }; // complete day of week names

For what its worth "Yamul" means "Day of" (or similar) in Arabic; all
those should really be,

 const char      *dow[]= {
          "Yaum al-Ithnain", "Yaum al-Thulatha", "Yaum al-Arbi'a",
          "Yaum al-Khamees", "Yaum al-Jumma", "Yaum al-Sabt", "Yaum al-Ahad"
 }; // complete day of week names

Corrected Tuesday's spelling and broke words according to true Arabic
words (don't know if you can have dashes or not -- alas, upto you -- those
should all really be in Arabic :-).  The "al" in arabic is like the english
"the" that's why most people's lastname almost always start with
"Al-something-or-other" :-)

> const char *sdow[] = {
>          "Ith", "Zul", "Arb", "Kha", "Jum", "Sab", "Ahd"
> }; // short day of week names

Again correcting Tuesday, I'd go with

 const char *sdow[] = {
          "Ith", "Thl", "Arb", "Kha", "Jum", "Sab", "Ahd"
 }; // short day of week names

> const char  *hmname[] = {
>          "Muharram", "Safar", "Rabi` al-Awal", "Rabi` al-Thaani",
>          "Jumaada al-Awal", "Jumaada al-Thaani", "Rajab", "Sha`ban",
>          "Ramadan", "Shawwal", "Zul al-Qi`dah", "Zul al-Hijjah"
> }; // complete month names

I'm not sure about the "Zul" stuff - replace both "Zul" with "Thu".

> const char  *hmnameshort[] = {
>          "Muharram", "Safar", "R. Awal", "R. Thaani",
>          "J. Awal", "J. Thaani", "Rajab", "Sha`ban",
>          "Ramadan", "Shawwal", "Z. Qi`dah", "Z. Hijjah"
> }; // short day of month names

You can do without the "Z." and simply go with "Qi'dah" and "Hijjah"

> >  2. The day-off is usually considered to be Jumaa (Friday) and so the
> >     first day of the week is usually noted to be Saturday and so I think
> >     Saturday (Sabet) should be first column on the left.
> 
> I have to check that question deeper, as i've heard that it's possible to 
> configure any day as first (in korganizer or in kde). If it weren't possible,
> i would change the code to correct it.... But checking how hdate package 
> resolves it, doing hcal, it shows Ahd as first day... Could you confirm that 
> question? 

I still stand by the assertion that Friday is similar to Sunday in the
Gregorian calendars (its the day off - should be in red :-) and Saturday
is the first day of the week.

> >  3. In order for this to really be "Arabic friendly" all those dates
> >     should be written in Arabic; I'm not sure if this is a localization
> >     issue or what, but it reads a bit hard with english abbreviations
> >     since I've never seen those before :-)  To get those strings
> >     translated will take approx. 5-10 minutes by someone on this list
> >     since there are so many high powered translators here.  Are there
> >     associated .pot files with this application ?
> 
> I'm afraid it's not possible yet, as kcalendarsystemhijri (the new library) 
> hasn't i18n support. If anyone liked to fix it... Otherwise,  i'll implement 
> that in brief ;)

I'm not sure what's entailed in generating and creating .pot files but it
should be a simple procedure which KDE should have very clean/clear guidelines
on since they are in almost all of their applications.

> > Suggestions:
> >
> >  a. I didn't see a "year" view; that would be helpful
> 
> It doesn't exist in korganizer. I agree it would be nice...

See if its something you'd like to add it to your TODO list.

> >  b. I'm not sure if this is possible, but it would be also useful to
> >     be able to see both Hijri and Gregorian on the same calendar as
> >     an option (Gregorian in english/latin text and the Hijri in Arabic
> >     text).  Reason for this suggestion is there are times when one
> >     wants to references dates to ensure proximity of things or to tell
> >     someone something (who's not familiar with Hijri) and so at a minimum
> >     the month view should give the user that option.  Most paper/cardboard
> >     calendars I've seen nowadays do that.
> >
> 
> I really like to see that ;) . I had planed it for future. It could be 
> easily  implemented as a korganizer plugin (similar to holidays). But, for 
> the moment, i think that the first milestone might be complete the basic 
> support in all korganizer features (events, etc...), and follow with 
> conversions then... One problem about those solutions is that many times the 
> calendar is really confusing, becouse of all those 22/12 23/14 ... dates. Do 
> you know another 'better displaying' solution? If not, that could be the only
> solution...

I might be reading too much into what you are saying.  And it might be beyond
the scope of this mailing-list ('doc' being for translation and localization
whereas 'developer' being for code/architecture/methodology/etc).  But let
me forge ahead with the following question and suggestion.  Why not implement
the internals of the calendar in any date format _you_ feel comfortable with
and then simply do a conversation (on the fly) to display what's stored in a
different format (Hijri in this instance) ?  That would prove itself very
simple to switch from one calendar type to another (ie. it will be very
expandable in the future) -- it becomes a conversion and display issue and
not a storage/recall issue.

As for how best to display, I'd tend to think something along the lines of
having two numbers within a box (while looking at a month view for instance),
so

  http://www.uniovi.es/~morfologia/Atlas/personal/korgi18n/monthview.png

would look something along the lines of (each box is a day),

  +--------------+    +--------------+    +--------------+
  |       |July 1|    |            |2|	  |            |3|
  |       +------|    |            +-|	  |            +-|
  |              |    |              |	  |              |
  |--+           |    |-------+      |	  |-+            |
  |30|           |    |Rajab 1|      |	  |2|            |
  +--------------+    +--------------+	  +--------------+

or similar...  In other words, use both the top and bottom portions for
different views (the Hijri could be on top if the user opts for a more
Hijri-centric look I guess; different colors could also be used, etc).
Just a suggestion.

> > Question:
> >
> >  i. once an entry is entered using the Hijri calendar, can one easily
> >     click on something to see that same entry in its equivalent
> >     Gregorian representation (I sure hope so :-) ?  Just curious.
> 
> It's neither supported yet ;) . A good solution must be found... For 
> example, an implementation could be another plugin that showed gregorian
> date just under the hijri date in the top dark grey band. In  the first 
> screenshot, eg. just under Arb 12, we could put Wed 21. What do you think?
> Or any other way...?

What I was getting at is not whether one will be able to see both calendar
types in one view, but whether one will be able to "click" on something to
convert his/her view from Hijri to Gregorian (completely switch over).

In others words, a user enters all his calendar entires in Hijri then
decides to view them in none Hijri mode (Gregorian or whatever), he/she
clicks on a button and whooosh everything gets converted correctly and
is now shown in the new calendar type.  Note the potential implementation
idea above would offer that -- again as a suggestion.

Salam.

 - Nadim


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