Hi everyone, It's weeks that I'm off posting, but I'm proud to tell you that I've got some impressive news for you related to the recent discussion.
The good news is that as you may know I've presented a paper called "FarsiTeX, and the Iranican TeX Community". There were many TeX, Unicode, and Omega experts there in the conference in India (Omega = TeX + Unicode). Now, after passing some mails, finally the Unicode Consertium has decided to release their 4.0 version in July 2003, the same time as TUG'2003 in Hawaii, Big Island. This is a Gold Anniversary release and so they have extended their standard to almost twice the size and included the best, most beautiful, and complete Unicode font of the universe in it. Slashdot has announced that just now Hermann Zapf is designing the Arabic glyphs, and finally Don himself has decided to stop working on the never-ending Volume IV, and to convert Hermann's glyphs to METAFONT programs. He has scheduled Computer & Typesetting Volume VI for late 2003 to include his Arabic/Persian glyphs' sources. He has also officially apologyzed for being asleep all the time since the invention of the Arabic script. More below: On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Aryan Ameri wrote: > This discussion between Arash Z and C bobroff is really interesting. It is > leading me to places that I have never explored before. This discussion is > telling us why Unicode isn't quite always usefull (yet). That's the point Aryan. It's now three years that we, in the FuWeb project are trying to find out why Unicode is not useful always, and it seems that the solution is finally here. So we should expect revolutionary changes in the coming decades. > After my first experience with Unicode, ( Which wasn't that long ago ), I > always thought that Unicode was everything people should ever want and that > you should put all those ISO things and fonts in to the trash. It's true for Mac and X people, but not for MS ones, simply because they don't have a Trash can on their desktop, the Bill Clause has just presented them with the economic Recycle/bin. > When I first saw KOffice 1.2, I thought I was lost in heaven. I saw a complete > Office package, with complete farsi support. I could type anything available > in farsi languages using it. Including some that are rarely used these days ( > like tanvin, e'rab, ... ) At the time, I thought That's it! now, no one needs > to get a pirated M$ Office and install farsi fonts or maybe some other sucky > package on top of it. I Thought that perhaps all those pain in the ass will > be over now. And I always considerd this ( and still do think so), the power > of Unicode and Free Software. I used to pray gods that KOffice was not the thing and you are still here on the earth with us, but the earth turned and turned and turned faster and faster, and I found myself hacking KOffice BiDi/Joining support to send you to heaven ASAP. > C bobroff's case though, proved me wrong. Simply don't believe him, I know him for years, his(/her?) a lier. > Unicode certainly has got it's advantages, but it's problem is lack of some > good fonts. C bobroff wants to use special fonts ( Completely acceptable in > my opinion ), that are not available in Unicode. So, he has to use non > standard methods ( requiring people to install a font on their system ), that > , considering many people who can't install them on their system ( like the > GNU/Linux users ) is not an acceptable method IMHO. You know, sometimes I wonder if I should Unicode or not, you should pay dollars even to buy their book, while many great books have been around for 1381 years or so..., I mean, if god wanted us to follow Unicode, he would put it in his/her/its last book. > Arash, If the Free software community wants everyone to use Unicode and W3C > validated pages, the community should stop f***ing around and should produce > some high quality Unicode TTF fonts. We can't rely on M$ Arial Unicode > forever. Well, I think the community don't need and can't stop f***ing, but producing some high quality Unicode TTF fonts is simply independent. BTW, I've asked someone to drop a line for Bill to make their Arial Unicode font reliable for Persian use. > As for C bobroff, I can really see your problems here and I give you high > credits for at least trying to solve them. You might be completely happy that > 80% of the people are able to view your site, and that might seem reasonable > enough for you ( I even think the figures are higher than 80% ), but keep in > mind that those 20% are not criminals. They deserve to be able to use the > internet in whatever way they want and with whatever browser or platform they > like. Remember that wether you like it or not, and wether it was your > intention is not, you are now encouraging people to use specific products ( > Like M$ IE ), that not everyone wants/likes to use. You are unintentionally > taking freedom from people, and this is a pretty big issue IMO. I second you on that, last time I tried to run Windows 2000 Advanced Server on my watch it crashed, just because it was registered for a Palm m505 hardware, not the Swatch. > Cheers Jeez Behdad Esfahbod For the FuWeb Project _______________________________________________ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
