--- Mikhael Goikhman <migo homemail com> wrote: > On 18 Dec 2002 15:11:44 -0800, Nadim Shaikli wrote: > > > > Keep in mind that iso8859-6 doesn't spell out proper Arabic visual > > support since it doesn't include all the shaped/joined glyphs and > > as such you should always revert to an 10646-1 font (which ought to > > include unicode's Form-B glyphs). Also in passing, the encoding > > should be UTF-8. > > > > So the following will work, > > > > Style * Font StringEncoding=UTF-8:*-arabeyes-*/iso10646-1 > > or > > Style * Font *-arabeyes-*/iso10646-1 > > > > (the UTF-8 is implied with a 10646-1 font indicator, per what > > Olivier had wisely implemented :-) > > No, this will not work, because the string encoding is not utf-8. > > > I would also think that the following ought to work (but I've > > been told that it doesn't), shouldn't this work (Olivier) ? > > > > Style * Font StringEncoding=UTF-8:*-arabeyes-* > > > > With regard to your 'naskhi' font - if it contains the required > > Form-B glyphs (U+FE70 - U+FEFF), then the following ought to work, > > > > Style Arabic Font *-naskhi-medium-*-iso8859-6/iso10646-1 > > If it is iso8859-6 font (not unicode), it can't be promoted to iso10646-1.
iso8859-6 is a subset of iso10646-1 -- again, iso8859-6 alone is simply not usable; its visually incorrect without shaping and one is not able to shape sans Form-B glyphs (there are a plethora of posts regarding this topic on the 'net - I can certainly send you the links if you like so as not to go on a tangent on this forum). > Nadim, you seem to imply that the only valid way to write Arabic is > unicode. But this is not correct. Here is a valid Arabic that is not > unicode: env LANG=ar_JO.iso8859-6 date I don't have any Arabic locale on this machine - sorry. But I do indeed imply and state that Arabic should be used with UTF-8 and nothing else (not even CP-1256 :-) I'm actually curious to why fvwm doesn't simply default to UTF-8 at all times ? > We supported all iso encodings. I see no valid reason to stop to support > iso8859-6. I think the problem is that once shaping is applied fribidi > (or is it iconv?) can't go back to iso8859-6 and uses question marks then, > so we should only apply shaping for unicode encoding of original strings. I don't think its a question of support. Fvwm is doing the right thing. I view this as "faulty/missing font" issue. The font file you were using simply doesn't have the _required_ Form-B glyphs and thus Arabic can't be displayed properly. Its like wanting to display chinese without having the correct chinese glyphs and getting question marks instead. Out of curiosity, how do 'env LANG=ar_JO.iso8859-6 date' and 'env LANG=ar_JO.UTF-8 date' differ ? iso8859-6 is an code-table representation (ie. an assignment of integer numbers to characters) where-as UTF-8 is a representation format (sequence of bytes). So I'm not sure what you mean above by "support all iso encodings". In other words, my ability to do StringEncoding=iso8859-6 and StringEncoding=UTF-8 seems a bit like comparing apples to oranges. I can understand the following encodings UTF-8, USC-2, USC-4 and UTF-16, but don't quite understand a setting akin to 'StringEncoding=iso8859-6' (unless fvwm is mapping names to encodings which is what I thought it did - "convenience magic"). > Just tried this theory. Yes, if I disable shaping, I see iso8859-6 with: > > Exec env LANG=C xterm -name Arabic -title "`env LANG=ar_JO.iso8859-6 date`" > Style Arabic Font '*-medium-*-12-*-iso8859-6' What you see (non-shaped glyphs) is text that most (if not all) Arab users will dismiss as broken (yup, shaping is that important) and the reason you see '??' (or other) when shaping is enabled is due to the fact that you are missing those Form-B (U+FE70 - U+FEFF) glyphs in your font file (include them and you are fine). > You may try these fvwm commands yourself with and without shaping code. > I don't believe you prefer question marks to non-shaped Arabic. :) Actually I would personally prefer questions marks as it will tell me I have a setup problem instead of seeing non-shaped characters (which a user would incorrectly assume a problem within fvwm). FYI, this is what most applications do. In short, with Arabic UTF-8 and iso10646-1 fonts should be used (at all times). If iso10646-1 fonts are unavailable, your font file must include Form-B glyphs. Regards, - Nadim (thanks for CC'ing) __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com -- Visit the official FVWM web page at <URL:http://www.fvwm.org/>. To unsubscribe from the list, send "unsubscribe fvwm-workers" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To report problems, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
