Re: Arabic Mandrake Cooker ?

[Diego Iastrubni <iastrubn at actcom dot co dot il>]

ביום שישי, 19 בדצמבר 2003, 06:59, נכתב על ידי Munzir Taha:
> On Thursday 18 December 2003 00:27, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> > A couple of days ago on IRC Diego Iastrubni (aka cuco) suggested
> > something that was very interesting and something that we should
> > follow-up in earnest on regarding Mandrake's Cooker.
> >
> > Diego noted the following,
> >
> >  + He pressured mandrake for 2 months until mandrake fixed hebrew issues
> >     http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/cooker/2003-08/msg03646.php
> >  + He asked for Arabic support as well,
>
> Thanks a lot for his attitude.
that's dumb... they have all thats needed and they felt down in the last 
0.02%... GTK supports BIDI, mdk tools get mirrored when run in arabic/hebrew 
locale, arabic fonts (TTF!) in main system, gnome translation. 
what is needed? fonts in drakx... that sux... ignoring such a huge market 
which is dominated by billie-ware alone is dumb. my government is thinking of 
using mandrake as a linux distro (so say the reports in local news site, i 
could even half confirm them rumors ). that is for one reason only: 
localization-out-of-the-box.

> >  but since Arabic uses TTF files
> >    he was told "NO" (TTF files are about 2 MB in size).
the reasons I have been given are lame, one of the best features of Mandrake 
is i18n. They are just saying NO to this. 
If a language is 93% translated and the install cannot use it, well... 
mmmmm........
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/l10n/ar.php3

> >  + He notes, cooker already has RTL support,
> >     http://iglu.org.il/mdkhe/rc1/DrakX-Nahlieli.png
> >    and the arabic translations are already done, only fonts are missing.
>
> Fonts are not missing-we have kacst fonts already included.
>
> Pablo: "The problem with DrakX is not with DrakX (it can use and display
> the fonts), but with the way the installation stage is done (at boot it
> creates some virtual system on RAM to run a small Linux system from where X
> and DrakX are launched, etc), there are severe size limitations, and the
> problem is that the size of the Arabic fonts were a bit too big. To fix it
> the installation stage (not DrakX, but the way the running Linux is put on
> memory) has to be completely modified. It's way too late for this version.
> For version after 9.2 the install method will be rethought to overcome that
> problem (that also affect several other languages)." see the MAPS
just to be clear:
hebrew is glyphs are dumb. They do not need to be as smart as arabic, chinese 
or indic ones. Thus, they were out in the big font used in DrakX installation 
(read ahead you will see what I mean). So no memory/space was wasted. 

> >    - Reporting a bug about this
>
> Already done and you have thankfully voted for it.
> http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5181
can you change the priority to "critical"? 

> >    - Having lots of people vote for the bug
I voted for this bug. I think... mandrake has problems with this system... if 
anyone proves I have not voted for it, please contact me. you will get a free 
beer next time we meet ;-)

> > I tend to agree with Diego - we _must_ be more demanding of distro esp
> > when everything we require is technically done - the inclusion of fonts
> > _must_ happen and we must get up in a roar about this (and other similar
> > minor issues).
cool, 2 duds agree with me, I must be on the right way :)

> > please do the above and tell us what to vote for and whom to spam ?  We
> > are more than willing to help out to get this issue resolved (as should
> > every person on this list).
> >
> > BTW: Diego, thanks for the suggestion.
you will not thank me after I will tell you what needs to be done, it's quite 
tricky:

1) I will assume you have the 3 iso's saved locally.

2) loopmount the first cd

3) copy the contents ot the whole disk to a new dir

3) copy $cdrom/Mandrake/base/mdkinst_stage2.bz2t to a temp dir

4) bunzip it

5) [root at cucomania tmp]# file mdkinst_stage2
mdkinst_stage2: Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystem data
loop mount the uncompressed filesystem you got

6) [root at cucomania fonts]# pwd
/root/tmp/drakx/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
ok, now you see where the fonts used in drakx are saved. 
copy the best font you can find there. 
[root at cucomania fonts]# cp /usr/share/fonts/ttf/arabic/KacstArt.ttf  .

you may want to do "ttmkfontdir" and "mkfontdir" in this dir.
also update /etc/X11/fontconfig to add this path.

7) compress the filesystem again, and copy the updated file to the temp disk 
you made.

8) now make a new bootable image. and you are done.
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/MakeCD

This worked for me, please tell me how it worked for you (we used type1 
fonts). We were thinking about releasing this remastering if mandrake had not 
fix this bug. Apparently you will have to do that.

Now, if you really want to go crazy, you can completely remaster the disks, 
and updating the kernel, OOo (it's rc4 in this disk, you can find in cooker 
final), remove kde (since you use gnome no?), add a spell checker, and 
whatever you feel it's needed. I think that the license of the distribution 
does not allow you to put propriety applications (java, flash, opera) in the 
new disks, only gpl'ed ware. RTFM.
read for more information: 
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/SlipStreamUpdates

One dud here, made a remaster of 92 and reduced the size the distro to one 
disk alone. (no gnome, mozilla gone, firebird in, kernel sources in, bla 
bla... RTFM: http://ehad.berlios.de/readme-en.html).

another hint:
once in a while, shoot a network install. even from a 9.0 disk, since it will 
download from the net "mdkinst_stage2.bz2". be sure you point to a cooker 
repository, and you get a hacked up cooker install. if it shows arabic you 
are safe. 
This is just to monitor the progress of Mandrake's job.

last hint:
get a serial (30 days evautation) from vmware's site. it will help you a lot. 
(remastering can be done in 15 minutes if you use it). you use even use iso's 
files as cdroms, and boot from them.

-- 

diego,

Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html