Standard fonts ?

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

With the posts on comp.emacs and the various reading I've done, I'm
royally confused when it comes to what's standard in terms of Arabic
fonts (yah, I know this simple issue :-)

I gather there are the following codepages (fonts),

  1. ISO8859-6
  2. DOS (what for ?)
  3. Codepage-1256 (Windows)

emacs claims to support 1 and 2 above (unverified).

There are also these format for the various fonts,

  1. plain-text maps
  2. snf (langbox)
  3. bdf (GNU emacs - GNU intlfonts distribution)
  4. pcf (various)
  5. binary? (akka)

The reason I'm listing all these things is, I'm trying to get testcases for
each subcategory.  If a package claims to support IS08859-6, it would be nice
to have fonts handy and a testcase (ie. a file encoded with those fonts) to
verify claims (I can't see that emacs, for example, supports the ISO
standard, but then again it could be that I don't have the appropriate tools,
and thus the question/suggestion).  Does anyone have any files I could get a
hold off (I'll start a repository of sorts until I have a complete enough set
which I could then upload somewhere maybe CVS on arabeyes.org or something).

I know there is also the issue of storage (visual vs. logical) which
complicates things further and pretty much opens the door for everyone to
implement whatever they see fit (inoperablity issues - ouch).

I've also peered at keyboards and what one ought to expect (well, in the
future :-) and came across this site

  http://crl.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/keyboards/arabic.html

Even Arabic keyboards are non-standard - sheeeesh !!!  At least this could
easily be taken care-of through 'xmodmap' and some modifier or something (this
is in the noise at this point, just thought I'd look that's all)

Mohammed, it might be a good idea to add a section with links to the various
"legit" (or proper) fonts out there (as a newbie to this myself, I'd guess
others would wonder, "OK, which fonts do I need and where do I get 'em".
Once things settle and I get to understand what's going on, I'll write up
an explanation that ought to be included as well.

Does this seem worth-while ?

 - Nadim