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[This message will be sent to the developer, general and doc lists
@arabeyes.org, my apologies if you receive multiple copies.] Dear Sirs, I'm currently developing a program which lets users create UML sequence diagrams with ease. It is my aim to make this program usable for as many people as possible, including the Arab development community. I'm a teacher and initially wrote this program for my CS students but I've decided to spread it on the internet in time, hence my interest in internationalization. It is written in Java and thus runs on any Unix/Linux platform, so perhaps this email is not completely off-topic for you. I hope to hear your view on the issues below, it would really help me finalize my program and make it usable for as many people as possible. Before you dismiss this mail as commercial spam, I am not trying to sell you anything. I am, however, hoping you'll share your opinion with me on some issues I've run into during development. I consult the arabeyes.org community because its mission is to further support for the Arabic language in Unix/Linux environment and I hope your interest in this matter extends to other initiatives that may spread the support for the Arabic language in software development. To realize my goal, I need developers with knowledge of Arab to help me out with some questions I have about the Arabic right-to-left script (don't worry, I will not ask you for translations ;) The links below show two versions of a sample diagram that I have produced, one in English and one in Arabic. Arabic example : http://fapomatic.com/show.php?loc=0702&f=example_arabic.jpg English example : http://fapomatic.com/show.php?loc=0702&f=example_english.jpg As I know nothing about Arabic, the words on the Arabic example are along the lines of "message seven", "value four", "object two", etc. I have used translate.google.com for this, so the result is probably not very good but that's not important right now. I have three open issues about how an Arab developer would use sequence diagrams and I hope that you can help me out with them. ----- Issue 1 (language related) Would Arab developers write their code in Arabic or in English (specifically : names of methods and variables). I'm asking because I wonder if they produce their sequence diagrams with Arabic script or do they generally stick to English script? ----- Issue 2 (direction related) You can see from the examples that the Arabic version uses a completely different layout to account for the right-to-left reading/writing direction. Execution starts at the top right of the diagram, while it starts at the top left in the English version. Also, the diagrams have been optimized for the reading direction : most arrows point right-to-left (Arabic example) and left-to-right (English example). My question is this : does the right-to-left layout feel more natural to you on the Arabic example? I haven't found any sequence diagrams on the internet with Arabic script so I have no reference on this, but I assume you would prefer a layout that follows the reading/writing direction? Or perhaps the use of English books is so common that everyone is used to a left-to-right layout even though they use a right-to-left script? ----- Issue 3 (font related) Please look at the Arabic example at 100% zoom for this. Are the word legible enough for you or would you like to see them bigger? The Arabic words use the same font size as the English words on the same diagram, but they look a lot smaller to me. A friend of mine followed an Arabic course once and told me that sometimes the difference between two Arabic symbols can be very small, so I would assume that the font size is too small? Also, the underlining of some objects hides a couple of the dots below some characters, would that be a problem for you? I'm using the standard underline feature of a Java JTextField for this, so it should be right, but it doesn't look right to me. Would you prefer more space between the word and its underline? ----- I'm really interested in how sequence diagrams are used by developers with a right-to-left script. Do you know of any (perhaps more on-topic) forum or community that would be interested in this discussion and if so, could you point me in the right direction please? I thank you sincerely for your time and any response you may wish to send me. Best regards, Yanic Inghelbrecht |
