Hi there: Though I have been a long time member of LinuxIran and FarsiKDE mailing lists ( well, maybe not that much long), this is my first message to persiancomputing. I asked a question from those mailing lists and as it was really off-topic, roozbeh adviced me to come and subscribe here. And I am not preparing to leave here anytime soon . So I guess, Welcome aryan !
A couple of days ago, a guy named Javad mostafavi asked me a wierd question. He got my email from the Mozilla website and thought that I am a font expert. Anyway, I did my best to help him as far as I could. He is running Mac OS X 10.1 on a Power G4 machine. He first asked me why is it that although he had enabled UNICODE on OS X, and UNICODE is also enabled in his browsers ( He told me he had tried IE and Mozilla ), still he is not able to see persian websites like Iran Emrooz in either Mozilla or IE. ( Hint:IE 5.0 is available for Mac OS X ) I told him that it's because those farsi sites like Iran Emrooz don't use Unicode fonts. Instead they assume that everyone is using Windows, so they use Windows specific fonts. I told him that although they don't use Unicode, work is undegone to make these pages available to other OSes. I also said that we had the same problem in Linux, but with recent versions of Mozilla, these issues have been solved, and mozilla 1.1 beta on Linux is able to show nearly all farsi pages without a problem. Then I briefed him that MS stated IE on Mac won't Support right to left fonts. So he better stick with Mozilla. I instructed him to Download the latest Mozilla build, and that it will probably show farsi pages. He downloaded Mozilla 1.1 beta, and then said it is pretty cool. But complained that he is not able to copy and paste texts to other word processors for editing purposes. In my next email, I told him that mozilla uses it's own libraries, so it integrates poorly with other applications. And in Linux it is the same and we have difficulty copying and pasting to word processors. Then I said that I myself, if I want to edit the text of a webiste, I will save it with mozilla in HTML format, and then will open the HTML page in a word processor. I told him that as I said before, I am not familiar with Mac, but Microsoft Office X and Apple Works probably both are able to open HTML files. Now here under, is his last email to me. I really don't know the answers to his questions, so I thought maybe I should discuss these with you. I know that it is compeletely off topic, and some will view it as a waste of bandwidth ( And it probably is a waste of bandwidth), but I had no other source to consult with. Hope apology is accepted. PS: The last part of his email ( About him living in orange county ) is the answer to my previous email. On Sat 10 Agust 2002, Javad Mostafavi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Wrote: >Salam, Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate your knowledge and viewpoints in this subject. The Mozilla I had downloaded was 1.1Beta and it seems that it had adjusted something by itself. Now I can read 85% of farsi text - some words are squeezed together and it makes reading difficult. But it is better than nothing. Now I need to find a way to convert the text into editable format. I have many programs such as Pagemaker 6.5 ME, Indesign 1.5 ME, Nisus 6.o, Word 6.0 and non of them are able to convert the text or I don't have the right font. In the past, when Hamshahri and Iran Emrooz were using Persian Font, I was able to copy the text from the html page and past it into a blank Nisus window and than run a script to convert the p-font to Macintosh font (Tehran). I had to remove the line breaks and than it was perfect for any page design and layout. Now none of the above works. I have tried Microsoft Office x trial version few month back and the 30 days trial period is over. The program cost $345.00 and I don't know if it works then, when I spend the money for it. I have not tried Apple Works. I see if I can find a trial copy or something and let you know of the outcome. I live in Orange County- Southern California for the last 20 years. Many young Iranian here are in computer fields and doing very good. I'm in publishing business and that is why my hunger for Unicode and all this. I wish you all the best and thanks again for your kind cooperation and advice. Hope to hear from you soon, Regards Javad Mostafavi -- /* It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. Professor Edsger Wybe Dijkstra/* Aryan _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com _______________________________________________ FarsiWeb mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/farsiweb
