Re: Arabic on Zaurus/Ipaq

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Abdulhaq Lynch <al-arabeyes at alinsyria dot fsnet dot co dot uk> wrote:
> On Saturday 26 February 2005 07:52, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> Well the main thing is hosting the font packages for now - there is very 
> little code on the Qt/E side (a couple of small patches for tashkeel - the 
> hard part was finding out where to put the patches). 

Again if you commit to its upkeep and in doing the leg work to get this
patch (and any other future work) adopted upstream then we can talk about
setting a project page for ya.

> I think it might be useful to host the vocabulary program (which is in OK 
> working order on normal PCs). In order to run the arabic vocabulary program 
> on the zaurus I ported it from Postgres to SQLite. It is now much more 
> 'installable' on other people's machines so I am fairly sure there would be 
> interest in this program (running on a normal PC) with arabic learners. In 
> fact the program was originally written for me to create an arabic vocabulary
> book but I soon realised that it could be useful for revision also. Currently
> there are about 350 words in it and I am aiming for 5001 of the most common 
> words.

How does this differ from QaMoose [1] and the EN->AR Wordlist projects [2] ?
What is it that you do differently and is there commonality there aside from
the GUI ?  Have you given any thought to a program to teach non-arabic
speakers arabic (like starting with a 4-5 year old kid or similar) ?

> > BTW: you should most definitely get your work adopted by the upstream
> > project (Qt/E).  Any patches/work/efforts we create are as good as the
> > current release and to make sure that your hard work is not wasted for
> > future releases it is best to get the application developers to accept your
> > work (even if it is #ifdef'ed out).
> 
> Yes, I am currently trying to do that but it may take some time. I also
> agree about the #ifdefs. One obstacle is that the OpenEmbedded development 
> environment is a bit of a beast and I am still getting used to it and of 
> course the maintainers have to get used to me.

Sure, the Qt/E people will have to know about this work and will have to
commit to some level of "OK'ness" if a patch were handed to them.  In
other words a conversation with them regarding their requirements on what
is needed to add this support might help (ie. what sort of patch will be
accepted).  The Vim patch, for instance, went through about 1 year of
back-n-forth before it was accepted but within about 2-3 weeks of initial
talks I got the "if you give me a patch that is self-contained and doesn't
impede on the code or style I will most likely accept it given I can fully
disable it and its features" (or similar).

In short, let us know (email to 'contact') if -
 1. You want a Qt/E bidi/shaping patch project page (until the main
    project adds its own and/or adopts the patch)
 2. You want to house your 'vocabulary program' (didn't know what name
    to use).

[1] http://qamoose.arabeyes.org
[2] http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Wordlist

Salam and keep up the effort(s).

 - Nadim



		
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