Re: Request for comments on Square Arabic

["Chahine M. Hamila" <HALCON11 at terra dot es>]

Well, Nadim, as I told in my previous mail quite a few times, and as
Muhamed just said it again, it is not about eliminating shaping as much
as add a few handy options. In any case, the gain in sheer number of
converted software as well as in algorithmic efficiency is just too
important to ignore, so again, being only an option, those who later
would like to see Cursive Arabic where they don't feel confortable with
Square Arabic will have every right to do it;)

Arabic support, like many other standard support types, can be defined
in different ways and given different labels according to what is there
(e.g. wild guess, AS Alef for RTL only support, AS beh for RTL+shaping,
AS teh for RTL+bidi only, AS theh for RTL+bidi+shaping etc... to
define). Using that example's terminology, it's better to have 100
applications with AS Alef support than only 2 with AS yeh support...
especially when not all need it (a word processor which doesn't have
bidi and shaping for example makes no sense, whereas a shell command
line on a terminal or a programming editor doesn't need that we waste
much time on it once RTL is added in regard to the developer resources
we have).

I think we will never remind this enough: anyone who wants to add
shaping to any piece of software will be free to do it. Just don't
forget, it's optional and shaping is not to be eliminated.

Salaam,
Chahine