Re: Request for comments on Square Arabic

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

Nadim Shaikli a *crit :

> My point is that "square" Arabic should not give you (or any other developer)
> a false sense of an application being Arabic-enabled simply by the additions
> of those fonts.

The addition of those fonts doesn't enable Arabic unless RTL at least is
supported. After that, it's a matter of definition as to what is Arabic enabled,
and a matter of degrees as well as I described before. After all, we could very
well consider an application that doesn't offer the correct typography for
English (like any terminal or most basic applications, English too having
conventional typography rules that are rarely respected out of TeX, partially MS
Word and a few other complex text processors) and some professionals will
consider anything less than TeX processing to be a profanation of English (yes,
I've known quite a few of these).

> Why?  because <speculation> 98% of the Arabic population, as
> history has testified, will reject it </speculation>.

I wouldn't be that assertive about it, as I don't think it has been a problem of
rejection as much as a problem of lack of diffusion (how many in the Arab World
were litterate at the time of these attempts, and how much diffusion and means
for it it had?). That said, the risk of rejection out of conservatism can exist,
definitely, and that's why we're making sure IT age Arabic remains the same our
prehistoric ancestors defined, making sure that any benefit that would be more
than we could ignore will be only optional in order to limit its effect as much
as possible. It is important to keep it in mind, and you are very right to point
that risk out.

> You wanted a comment - you got one, so leave me out of it :-)

And thank you for it, your comments *are* important:)