[Localization] Arabic Font Status

[Martin Sevior]

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
>