Arabic info on the 'net

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

As noted I did quite a bit of surfing today and came across LOTs of relevant
information which I will list below (there's plenty to chew).

- arablug.org:

  well I got the email address of the site's admin and sent him email, haven't
  heard back.  I did find out that arablug.org has a predecessor and a rather
  active mail-list (well it was very active a year ago, not so active now and
  there seem to be lots of spam on it now of people selling crap).  Chahine
  contributed to the list a few times from what I saw :-)

  http://www.arablug.org/linux

  mail list -- http://www.planux.com/linux/arabic-linux
  to subscribe - majordomo at marko dot net 
  
  The mail-list is hosted by this british(?) guy (markster at marko dot net) whom we
  ought to contact once we're ready to see what's his stance and how to fold
  him in if that is deemed appropriate and you guys set it fit.

  http://www.marko.net/arabic/lists

  There were lots of people on the list, it would be ideal to go through the
  archives and note the serious contributers and start a list of their emails
  (any volunteers, Ahmad ??).  I can help here as well, let me know the months
  and years you'll grab and I'll do the rest.

- team-linux.org

  Came across this site and it notes that those guys were (don't know if they
  are -note present tense-) very active in the KDE front.

  http://www.linux-team.org (in Saudia Arabia)

  The site lists the following guys,
    + Anmar M. Al-Massari
    + Majed M. Al-Massari
    + Khaled Gamel
  The only email mentioned was 'webmaster at linux-team dot org', I did _not_ contact
  since I wanted to see what you guys thought or if anyone you knew 'em - we
  definitely ought to keep them in mind though.

  The site mentions www.linux4arab.com as well as a message board (Arabic)
  that they seem to frequent.

  http://www.kwakeb.net/forums/postlist.pl?Cat=&Board=linuxos

- Past coders/contributers

  Ahmed Abdel-Hamid  (author of Acon)
  Fawaz Al-Anzi      (author of xaterm)

  Someone needs to find their current emails and contact 'em.  The "contact"
  ought not be "hey code for us or contribute", but "join and help in any
  capacity - even if its just your opinion or direction", these are guys
  that knew what they were talking about and so it would be ideal to get
  some of their free time :-)

- Projects

  RedHat has a internationalization project which does _NOT_ include Arabic,
  but does include heb. (surprise, surprise !!)

  http://www.labs.redhat.com/projects.shtml

- Universities

  Came across this list which is somewhat dated (1996), mailed the author to
  see if he has anything more current -- it does note Fawaz's email address
  in Kuwait (Univ. of Kuwait; Ahmad, you might want to contact him and see if
  you can talk to him gently :-)

  http://cs-www.bu.edu/ftp/amass/arab-cs-ce.html

  It would be ideal if we ourselves could update this list through various
  contacts, suggestions..

I can keep a contact list of people active if you guys wanted to mail me
the names of various people (and their emails of course) of whom you thought
would be interested and useful for this effort (including those mentioned
above).  I would keep the list handy only until the site is up and active,
meaning I shan't pester them :-)

 - Nadim