Re: Greetings from new member

[Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de>]

I would concider this like an R&D project! WOW!!!

Arafat

Am Samstag, den 20.11.2004, 15:58 -0800 schrieb Nadim Shaikli:
> --- gar <gar at arabink dot com> wrote:
> > >  
> > >
> > > 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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