When I saw Mr Mohammed Sameer's, response to my post I was tempted to
reply and say "Please reread my post, I did not complain or ask for a
fix." I decided not to do so because I saw no real value in responding
to such a post. But now that Mr. Waleed Hosny, the one who actually
asked the questions, responded with a similar breath, I have to respond.
If you haven't noticed, my post was the first post ever to this list. I
just joined the mailing list a few days ago and was as happy to find it
as I was looking forward to contributing and sharing on it and to it. I
still am.
I'm fully aware of the magnitude of effort required to solve a problem
such as Arabic spell-check. Here's a excerpt from a letter I sent to a
friend less than 3 days before Mr. Hosny sent his request for feedback
and comments.
--- begin excerpt ---
Thanks for the forward. This is a huge problem. Also, this is a huge
undertaking. It is quite a challenge to properly check Arabic for
correct spelling, because it can not be done with out resorting to
grammar. I'm convinced of this. In Latin-based and Indo-European
languages spelling is not related to grammar (very few exceptions might
exist). Even Hebrew does not have the many complications Arabic has
(shaping and "harakat" are examples)
Something like this has to be dealt with on a pan-Arabic level to
produce good results that apply to the language in all of its various
forms/locales and even distortions in some cases. All Arabic countries
must contribute with linguists and/or engineers for R&D for this to
happen. The other option is to declare Arabic a dead language (from an
IT point of view) which is not an option really with over 300 million
speakers still alive and kicking.
Who can tackle this??? I don't know. But if there was time for a few
people to just "kick-off" a project that builds on what is available and
start producing results, even if small, it will be easier to convince
others to join in and jump on board, for their own benefit.
--- end excerpt ---
Also, I'm aware of the Duali project at Arabeyes, and I have been
seriously looking at it as one of the projects I can contribute to. CUPS
is the other one. I personally had no intention of sitting around and
waiting for some one to fix this for me/us. I know better.
Two things really bothered me in your posts. One is the defensive and
the some what rude attitude in Mr. Mohammed Sameer's post that hurts the
willingness of other to participate (STFU, come on... there's really no
need). Mr. Hosny asked for comments, he did not say STFU, or did he? The
other is the response of Mr. Waleed Hosny. Really Mr. Hosny, you should
have added a small note at the bottom that clearly stated that you
expected "Wonderful", "Excellent", "Awesome", and "God Bless You" as
responses to your four questions. I thought you were genuinely
interested in honest feed back. And honestly, spell-checking is missing
and needed. No where did I ask you or demand it be fixed by you or anyone.
I read my post again to see how I might have given the impression that I
expect anyone else to fix this while we wait, and I couldn't find any. I
believe that my message was courteous and friendly too. Maybe,
gentlemen, you should add "easily offended", "defensive", and "jumping
to conclusions" to your lists of cultural problems we suffer from.
Having said all that, I will do my best to help where I can. Maybe our
situation in Palestine does not allow us to do as much as we would like,
but some of us are truly dedicated and willing to do what they can, with
what they have.... where we are!
Best Regards,
Ammar Ali;
Waleed Hosny wrote:
Unfortunately I do agree with you Mohamed, and this becoming a
cultural issue for us to wait for others to do work for us.
Features like spell checkers need investment in R&D from an Arabic
linguistic point of view because such technology needs to be fast,
modular and capable to integrate not only with Office products but
also with mail clients , web mail clients etc...
Sun can help with enhancing the product but R&D if even funded by Sun
will be very hard to be donated to OSS because of the copy right
license which usually restrict such action (I mean if Sun decided to
purchase an Arabic spell checker it will be very hard to integrate it
with OpenOffice because of the license restrictions).
So it is our role to start such a project, Is there any NGO/Gov agent
that may be interested to invest in R&D?
Such projects usually come from a research lab / university, Is there
any university in Saudi, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, U.A.E, etc.. that have
carried such a project and have a tangible outcome that can be used as
a foundation for OSS- Arabic spell checker??
Regards,
Waleed
Adil Allawi wrote:
Hello Mohammed,
All I can say is one needs to be patient. It has taken Sun this long
to get OpenOffice properly competitive with MS Office in the European
markets and in China let alone Arabic. And look how long it took
Mozilla to come up with a useable web browser. Now OpenOffice has
some killer features I think the interest in Europe will create more
interest for Arabic.
Also, the fact that Waleed Hosny himself chooses to ask here is a
sign that all your efforts are being recognised from above.
As for the cultural issue - my father was interviewed on MBC during
Gitex. The interviewer told him that last year 2 million dollars was
spent by Arab companies on R&D. In economic terms that is nothing. No
wonder things progress so slowly.
Regards
Adil
At 21:11 +0200 4/11/05, Mohammed Sameer wrote:
On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 05:44:23PM +0200, Ammar Ali wrote:
One critical missing feature is Arabic spell-check and grammar
check. I
know these are not exactly perfect in MS Office, but they exist and
many
people depend on them to a certain extent. Many have sited these
missing
feature as reasons not to make the switch to OO2.0.
I don't really understand how we are thiking.
We have an incomplete Arabic spell checker, No one volunteered to help.
No one is welling to take over the project.
We don't do our homework and we start asking other people to do it
for us!!!!!
I don't really understand how our culture is formed.
I don't really feel OK because We didn't introduce the Arabic
support in
Gtk, Qt, Mozilla, OpenOffice, All what we are doing is begging
people, Submitting bugs,
Shouting all the time yet no one volunteered to fix the any broken
thing.
I might be one of those people but realising this fact I simply STFU
or try to do
whatever I can.
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