Re: linux arabic standardization

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Chahibi Youssef <chahibi at gmail dot com> wrote:
> Can you tell me what I have to say to Arabization.org.ma I'll contact
> them incha'allah by phone.

The four point below are a good start.  You can also tell them about
Arabeyes and the work that has been done (did I say 87,000 words in
our general dictionary translated along with numerous (don't have a
count, but can get one) strings in various projects (gnome, kde,
debian, etc)).  What needs to be noted is that we are serious about
the work and we are doing all of this for __FREE__.  They should also
note that we don't have any agendas and are here simply due to our
love to the Arabic language and its culture, etc.  You might want to
get more familiar with Arabeyes and its history (3+ years) to really
instill our commitment and work ethic to 'em.

> >  1. Contact arabization.org.ma and tell them to fix their horrible
> >     website (and have them move to UTF-8 from CP-1256 while at it :-)
> >  2. Contact arabization.org.ma (or ALECSO) to introduce Arabeyes and
> >     our collective work to them and have them take a look at our
> >     EN->AR Wordlist [1]
> >  3. Contact arabization.org.ma (or ALECSO) to see if they would be
> >     willing to share their work with us under an open source license.
> >     Emphasis on common goals, long-term benefits, etc, etc.
> >  4. Talk in more detail on more extensive collaboration.
> > 
> >
> > [1] http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Wordlist

You might also want to tell them that we have more grand plans (like
an Arabic->English dictionary, automatic sentence/paragraph translators,
etc) and we are looking for assistance and since they are the ultimate
authority we most certainly would like to have better communication and
more involvement.  Our goals, from what I saw, seem to be related and
so it would be best to work together.

We also have a number of Unicode.org issues with which we would like their
opinion and involvement on.  Here are some sample pleas for help [2][3].

[2] http://arabeyes.org/~nadim/unicode/unicode_help_en.pdf
[3] http://arabeyes.org/~nadim/unicode/unicode_help_ar.pdf

Hope that helps and keep us all posted on what happens (this might take
some time, so don't rush and don't be abrasive or abusive - try to set
a face-to-face meeting with them to convey all these ideas/points).

Salam.

 - Nadim


		
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