[Localization] Arabic Font Status

[Martin Sevior]

Oh, I forgot the most important bit. Please file your bugs to:

http://bugzilla.abisource.com/

and please also attach the document which be used to reproduce the bug
to the report.

Thank you very much!

Martin


On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Martin Sevior <msevior at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Khaled,
>               We at AbiWord share your frustration. We would really
> like to improve our complex script support for Arabic and all the
> other complex script languages.
>
> However for us the frustration is that we really are helpless to fix
> these bugs unless we have a collection very explicit bug reports. The
> developers of AbiWord do not know Arabic so the only way we can get
> this fixed is to have a collection of bugs with really explicit
> examples of what goes wrong. ie Screenshots of what text looks like
> after some manipulations and explicit instructions of what should
> happen instead.
>
> With these in hand we can track down and fix bugs and improve Arabic support.
>
> AbiWord-2.6.4 is available for many linux distros now and provides the
> same rendering mechanism as Write in the sugar-0.82 release. Make your
> bug reports for either AbiWord-2.6.4 or Write for sugar-0.82.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Martin Sevior
>
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 2:01 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 08:03:45PM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>>>> Hi Greg,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 7:57 PM, Greg Smith <gregsmitholpc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> > Hi Sayamindu, Khaled et al,
>>>> >
>>>> > Is there a new Arabic font in 8.2-765?
>>>> >
>>>> > I have a volunteer to help test Arabic but I'm waiting until the new
>>>> > font is in before she starts testing.
>>>> >
>>>> > Let me know the status.
>>>> >
>>>> > Also, let me know who else can try it out in this release.
>>>> >
>>>> > If Arabic is not ready yet we can shoot for 8.2.1. The sooner we make it
>>>> > work well, the better. 500 x XOs were already handed out in Lebanon and
>>>> > more will go to Arabic speaking countries before the end of 2008.
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> The new fonts are in 8.2-764 and above.
>>>>
>>>> I cannot read Arabic, but one of the still unresolved issues from what
>>>> I can see from the UI is the icon mirroring problem (#6562)
>>>>
>>>> Also, during testing Arabic in Write activity, you'll have to
>>>> specifically select the Arabic font before doing anything (#2207).
>>>> Note that is not an issue which can always be reproduced - sometimes
>>>> the characters show up properly, and sometimes they don't.
>>>
>>> Those all are AbiWord bugs, unfortunately AbiWord has a very fragile
>>> font fallback system and buggy OpenType layout as well.
>>> This shouldn't only affect Arabic, but may be other languages as well.
>>>
>>> I sometimes wonder do we really need AbiWord? I think most of the
>>> features that we use in Write can be implemented with gtk.TextView, but
>>> I did no real investigation on this.
>>
>> I don't know how we are going to reimplement collaboration, tables,
>> other formats import/export, etc
>>
>> The Abiword project is one of the FOSS projects that has actively
>> contributed most to OLPC and I for one am very grateful of their
>> support, let's try to have a more positive attitude towards fellow
>> contributors.
>>
>> Khaled, how could Abiword improve in Arabic support? Do you have any
>> idea about how to resource that work?
>>
>> [cc'ing Abiword's Martin and OLPC's Greg]
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Tomeu
>>
>