Re: Greetings from new member

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- gar <gar at arabink dot com> wrote:
> > آهلا وسهلا
> >
> > After lurking for quite a while (first discovered arabeyes a few years 
> > ago, if I remember correctly) I've decided to take the plunge and try 
> > to find the time to get involved, so this is my introductory missive.

Great - welcome aboard.  The key here is not to disappear and to take
ownership of something to lead the way - that's the best way to get
something accomplished for it will encourage others to lend a helping
hand.

> > In particular, here's what I see as a fundamental issue:  the 
> > nurturing of an indigenous, monolingual software development 
> > community.  By this I mean it should be possible for a kid anywhere in 
> > the Arab world to learn to hack code without having to learn English 
> > first.  A simple measure of success is easy to define: successful 
> > implementation of a major software project entirely in Arabic.  (The 
> > same obviously goes for any linguistic community; I just happen to 
> > have learned Arabic so that's where I concentrate.)
> >
> > So I propose as a possible goal for arabeyes the design and 
> > implementation of an Arabic language programming language.  Virtually 
> > all programming languages today are optimized for expressiveness in 
> > English; what would happen if we had a language optimized for 
> > expressiveness in Arabic?  Arabic is terrifically powerful and 
> > flexible when it comes to abstraction; who knows what interesting 
> > things might come out of a project to create an Arabic-based 
> > programming language?
> >
> > As a start, I propose the arabization of Scheme, probably using the 
> > Guile implementation.  Scheme is very simple, very powerful, 
> > relatively easy to implement, and it's a wonderful language for 
> > learning computational concepts.  I think it would be relatively 
> > simple for a good experienced programmer to modify a Scheme 
> > implementation to work with Arabic keywords and handle Arabic strings. 
> >  Wouldn't it be fun to write code in Arabic?

Personally I wouldn't be a fan of this idea _now_.  I still think we
have a ways to go before we can move in this direction.  But its not
for me to discourage and/or sway your plans.  I'm simply thinking
about the added benefit of such a system.  When it comes to programming
I think most people simply contend with the need to program in english
(not german or french but english).  The idea is not to get too mired
into "us vs. them" mentality or "I shan't touch this unless its in
arabic".  Its a forgone conclusion that the entire world has accepted
that if you plan to program then you really need to do it in english.
Granted this is a barrier for some of our kids, but I think if the
intent is there its a rather low hurdle to get over because again
reinventing the wheel for the sake of having a wheel is a waste of time,
it would be much wiser to use the wheel to build something more grand.

> > In addition to XML editing, I need a good file comparison tool that 
> > handles Arabic.  I've looked at a bunch of them but still haven't 
> > found one.  If there isn't a good one out there I suppose the thing to 
> > do would be to arabize gnu diff.

Noted.  Then we need to add 'diff' to our list of things that we need
to add arabic support to and this I'd agree with - this is a rather
basic necessity which is rather urgent.

> > And that's not even considering the bizarre (and IMHO totally 
> > unacceptable) behaviour of the cursor in bidi enabled software.  Nor 
> > the many other issues that make Unicode Arabic one of the worst 
> > designs in the history of technology.

The cursor behavior is bizarre because none of us (and no one else has)
spec'ed out what really needs to happen in various scenarios.  When it
comes to adding arabic support to xterm/mlterm/PuTTY this is the second
phase of such an addition.  In PuTTY's case this is the state that we
are in and we would love to get some assistance in this area which
relates to how to handle control-characters.  Once we can agree on what
needs to be done we can (and should) specify what needs to occur and
start pushing said specification so that people can implement it if
they are indeed interested in fully support RTL languages.  I know
others have and are looking into this [1] & [2] (search for 'Shachar'
and/or 'edit controls").  I was hoping to get assistance from Mr. Ahmad
Khalifa but he seems to be busy with some other things and isn't yet
focused on this topic (I really need to hunt him down for a talk too).

Gregg, you seem to be very enthusiastic and idea-filled.  The point here
is not to argue until we are all blue in the face, but to plan forth a
direction and lead it.  In other words, since you are into XML and
integrating that into the .PO translation flow - go ahead with the
idea if you think it will ease people's life and show us a prototype
of the end result that you have in mind.  The prototype will give you
feedback on how to proceed (if at all) and it will also give tangibles
to those doing the actual .PO translation work to see what benefits
they can reap from it.

Bare in mind that we are small in number so don't let our lack of
immediate support discourage you - we're all juggling a number of
things and until an idea/plan get clearer most usually tend to simply
shy away.

[1] http://cvs.arabeyes.org/viewcvs/ae_admin/irc/irc.summary_jul2004
[2] http://cvs.arabeyes.org/viewcvs/ae_admin/irc/irc.party_jul2004

Salam.

 - Nadim



		
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