Re: Open Issues & Todos

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at newhorizons dot com dot sa> wrote:
> On Monday 24 November 2003 04:45, Nadim in his TODO_global wrote:
> >  - Free Fonts
> >    + Need KACST to include the various changed from M.Yousif (Quran)
> >    + Need a knowledgeable font designer to review Khotot project
>
> + Some characters are missing from Urdu Nastaliq Unicode, e.g. ALEF
> WITH HAMZA ABOVE (U+0623), YEH (U+064A), TEH MARBUTA (U+0629), ALEF
> MAKSURA (U+649), ...

I'm not sure I understand - missing from Urdu Nastaliq Unicode ?
Are you talking about a specific font ?

> This font is a good font IMHO that worth looking at, and should be
> added to the khotot project.

Can you please post a URL ?

> + Tashkeels (diacritics) should be consistent with the font. It's
> illogical to have the same diacritics dimensions for kacstposter and 
> kacstdecorative as the ones for kacst-qr!!
>
> + The size of the kacst-qr font should be enlarge to conform with the other 
> kacst font series. Now kacst-qr font is very small. In other words kacst-qr 
> size 14 is much smaller than any Arabic font size 14. This has cause a 
> problem in Mandrake for example because developers there can't go and test 
> each font size separately for each language.

I'll add those two points (with some rewarding ;-) to the subsection in
the file, but I really think we need to open a better dialog with the
KACST folk and to establish more of a channel with regard to our work
and feedback -- Ahmad.T could you let us know what we need to do and let
the KACST people know of our pending issues ?
 
> >  - Terminal Emulators
> >    + Gnome-terminal: Need to include shaping
> >    + Xterm: Need to include Bidi/shaping (already has utf-8 support)
> >      (www.wholehog.fsnet.co.uk/robert/xterm)
> >    + Need to look into rxvt (does it have utf-8 support ?)
> [munzir at localhost munzir]$ rxvt
> 
> ==============================================
> WARNING!!
> rxvt is unable to display in UTF-8 encoding
> you should use xterm instead
> ==============================================

OK, I'll add that we need to have utf-8 added to it :-)

> >  - Quran Datafile
> >    + Need an authority to verify data file's content and correctness
>
> I can't understand this long-awaiting desire yet. How come you are trying to 
> find an authority to verify a data that's not complete yet. Up to now, the 
> font is not complete and even when it's completed, you need to implement all 
> those Quran annotation signs in the data files before you even consider 
> searching for the authority. I will try to help when there is something to
> be approved.

This is not a serial process, we need someone to tell us what is wrong and
what needs to be fixed (a list of things) so we can knock them out and get
this task completed.  Waiting for one thing to finish before starting another
is a receipe for non-action.

> >  - Akka
> >    + Need a complete rewrite of current project
> >    + Need to reduce dependencies and code bloat
> >    + Need to make it more portable (not only linux-centric)
> >    + Need to look into the 'farsi' application as a possible replacement
> + Need to make it use configure (autoconf) if not already use, can any one
> say for sure.
> + Need to consider endianess and word size (that is: don't presupposing
> 32bit x86)
> >    --> Involved:
> >        = was    - Mohammed.Elzubeir
> >        = was    - Samy.AlBahra
> =is -Muhammad Alkarouri (even supplied a patch)

I'll update that - thanks.

> >  - LaTeX2HTML
> >    + Add Arabic language (requires little Perl knowledge)
> >    + Create a 'style' file like one of the packages in latex2html/styles/
>
> Can you explain to me what's the problem  here. I tried it and it works!

I have no idea - it was there in the file when I started.  Mr. Elzubeir,
any comments ?
 
> >  - Office-related Apps
> >    + Need DIA   localized
> >    + Need Gaim  localizaed
>
> I know that Gaim's .po files are already translated and you can type Arabic 
> within it. What's the problem then? (shaping?)

No problem, so Gaim is completely done ?  I'll replace it with Xpdf then :-)
 
> >  - Children Games
> >    + Find a list of viable games to include
>
> + Add the Arabic language to Ktouch. I think a typing tutor that supports 
> Arabic is something very important to children and adults too.

OK, will do.

> >  - Shirts
> >    + Need a means to print and distribute T-shirts with Arabeyes' logo
>
> Are you serious ;) I ask for one in advance.

Serious enough to know that people will want one (of a few ;-)

Thanks for the feedback, keep 'em coming & salam.

 - Nadim


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