On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 09:18:20AM +0300, ammer wrote: > Nadim Shaikli wrote: > > >Salam. I very very very much suggest you list out what is it that Linux > >is lacking so that everyone can take note of those short-comings and put > >an action plan in place to address those issues. > > > > > First of all, it is very strange for me to be asked about the lacks in > Arabic support in Linux from a guy who I am really expecting him to be > deeply involved in the arabization efforts and has a lot more > experiences than me (and I am sure you are and I have much respect for > you), but I think you need me to prove my sayings with something precise > (or may be I am too much outdated which I hope so), so OK I will try. You shouldn't find it strange. There are too many things out there to test, adapt and use. There is no way one person could have used them all (unless that is exactly what they are trying to do). I have often asked and will ask again, that is _exactly_ what we expect from the non-developers and non-translators. At the very least, test and report back any and all short-comings from applications you either expect to have Arabic support or already have Arabic support. What Nadim (and all of us) need you to do is to make the issues you find known. Don't expect others to know about it -- there is only so much one person can do ;) > I want to mention a notice: > > Most (95%) of the guys who are paying for windows are working in the > enabled interface not the localized one because they want to get the > best of the software they are paying for (even if they are beginners in > English), and they are almost an employees, so the translation should be > the last thing we need to wory about and the functionality is the main > concern for us. We are very well aware of that. However, that doesn't mean that we should abandon translation. The idea here is to fully utilize our collective potential. So, if you have development skills you contribute to one aspect and if you have linguistic skills you contribute to another. We are not _focusing_ one one issue or the other. We have a very wide view of the challenges and they must be tackled in parallel and not in a linear fashion -- and that is simply because one complements the other. > Then we need developers to make thier efforts and others should try to > bring any other kind of support (financial/spritual/...) they can do, to > speed up the process. We need more everything and everyone ;) The number one resource any voluntary Open Souce project such as Arabeyes has is volunteer's time. The rest is all secondary. > I prefer GTK+ over QT because it is truely free and truely open, and > that why Mozilla and OpenOffice are relying on it (by default). That is all opinion (which I might even agree with ;). > > First I will mention some key applications and some problems in arabic: > > - Storing the Files in Arabic names with all the functionality needed > for that like search and easy to rename.... That is a problem. The problem here is that shell prompts don't support Arabic input. So, even if your kernel has utf-8 support and the application you used supports Arabic, you will still be unable to manipulate files that are named in Arabic. This is not something particular to Linux. Windows is the same way. You can do most of what you are asking from a GUI filemanager (or I believe KDE3's can do that). -- if I am wrong please correct me, I don't use KDE. > - Easy way to move the arabic named files from windows to Linux > - An eady guide for beginners in Arabic Language, and a support forum in > Arabic There are many places where you will find forums and discussions on general Linux issues. Arabeyes is not setup specifically for that -- we can't be everything for everyone ;) Places like linux-egypt.org and linux4arab.com are more appropriate for such discussions. However, the 'Arabic HOWTO' or guide is something that is long overdue and it certainly needs to be written. I think someone in Linux-egypt.org is woking on such a document. If so, we will make sure that we can maintain a version of it at the very least. > - OpenOffice: all modules (I don't consider any importance for KOffice > because it is far away from competing with MS Office) > - Scheduling Program integrated in OpenOffice (Evolution still gtk1.x > and KOrganizer is still bahind evolution with some problems in Arabic) Can you be more specific? What do you mean by all modules? What about all modules, what is _exactly_ missing or not working properly. > - Mozilla (It is the defacto industry supported > Browser/Mail/Envirenment) (for developers: please take your time to read > about Mozilla as an environment, also visit oeone.com as an example of > what easy we can do a switch from QT to GTK2 and gain the built in > Arabic/Bidi support inside Mozilla) but still the mail program suffers a > lot of misbehaviors in Arabic text like selecting and navigating. Mozilla displays Arabic pretty well. Again, can you be more specific? > - Printing Arabic text from browsers/office (I tried it using the > israeli hacked bidi open office rpm and it is working but it is not > WYSIWYG perfectly, by the way it is updated now and it is merged with > the tree of openoffice 1.0.0) What is merged? The IBM patch? > > > As an Idea, we can do an indicator about the donations received and > should update in run time, also we need to declare the manifesto of us > to include the winning key of the Arabic Language which it is Islam (It > was developed before when the community of blender was trying to collect > 100 thousands euro for opening the source code of the blender software > and it was successful amazingly in three-four weeks only, and this meter > was a critical feature for encoraging others to pay donations, and the > donators happened to be the first members of the community supported > forum of the blender software) > Also we need to implement an easy way to give our donations, and I am > one of the guys who don't have any credit card, and I will never agree > to make any transfer to any where out of Islamic World (so please > clarify forward me to the options I have to make a payment) The main problem for this is 2 things: 1) We don't receive that many donations to make it 'real-time', but since they don't happen very often they are reflected on the web almost instantaneously. 2) The method of donation (through paypal) is hard for most people to work with (not very easy for many people) -- but it is currently our best option. Thank you for your continous feedback -- it is the dialog that we ensure we are still on the right track or not ;) later -- ------------------------------------------------------- | Mohammed Elzubeir | Visit us at: | | | http://www.arabeyes.org/ | | Arabeyes Project | Homepage: | | Unix the 'right' way | http://fakkir.net/~elzubeir/| ------------------------------------------------------- --- Was I helpful? Let others know: http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=elzubeir
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