Re: Mirroring in Mac OS X (was Mirroring in Unicode)
Dear Behnam, No, this is another story. The sad news is that there are multiple implementations of Unicode in Mac OS X. WebKit (The engine of Safari) has its own Unicode/Bidi engine. Cocoa has its own Unicode with no native Bidi with some ugly Carbon ATSUI patches bolted on and some ICU thrown in to get limited Bidi. Carbon uses an incomplete and degraded implementation of ATSUI which is a downgraded and crippled version of QuickDraw GX layout engine of system 7 days. That is not all. I really hope Apple will start to clean up this extremely ugly mess, otherwise they will be forced out of bidi markets for good. It is amazing how much worse their bidi text engine is compared to 12 years ago. The problem is that each of these have their own bugs. Sometimes the bugs are a result of the same thing being applied twice because of API layering. This is the case with Safari. In some combinations of style sheet and page tags it tends to mirror a glyph twice which will result-in no mirroring which is wrong. Actually the workaround in such case is to use a buggy font which does not have a 'prop' table (like a PC font) and then it will work because it would not be mirrored by the normal mechanism and just WebKit's extra mirroring would create the correct result. I really hope someone at an influential Apple position would listen to me It really frustrates me to see Apple (who once was a pioneer in bidi and was one of the key founders of Unicode) in its current sad position in bidi support. The problems are deep rooted and want a real effort and will in high management positions to solve. - Hooman Mehr On Jun 12, 2004, at 7:51 PM, Behnam wrote: Short of missing something on the list, that would be me providing alternatives to Apple standard keyboards. But they are not "fix" of existing standards. In fact, they are not standard at all! But you are right. This is a minor issue and can be fixed. I can do it for Mac community but I rather ask Apple to do it in its original issue. My concern is more to do with different approaches in dealing with mirroring characters. The point being, it doesn't seem to be the way mirroring characters are mapped on MS keyboards. And most of the web-pages are typed by MS keyboards. Am I on the right track? Behnam On 12-Jun-04, at 10:54 AM, Hooman Mehr wrote: Hi, I checked it and can confirm that Apple's ISIRI 2901 keyboard has a bug in this regard. The Persian opening parenthesis in ISIRI 2901 is located on shit-0 and closing parenthesis on shift-9, but Apple's implementation have them reversed. This is a minor issue. The keyboard file is an XML file that can be easily edited with sys. admin. privileges. I think someone already posted information on a fixed and enhanced Persian Mac OS X keyboard on the list. - Hooman Mehr ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Personal names survey
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > To be honest, I have NEVER seen anyone put Kasre in personal > names. You have! You just didn't notice. You also put them (i.e. pronounce the ezaafe) in personal names when speaking which you also don't notice. Our library is closed all weekend as we're on quarter break but I'll scan a few covers for you on Monday. Maybe not until evening though. I may or may not also record some audio of the same thing off the internet for you. Luckily some nice person has just taught me the secrets of streaming audio. -Connie ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Personal names survey
Hi Connie, To be honest, I have NEVER seen anyone put Kasre in personal names. I just tried all books in my small shelf and NONE of them had kasre on the cover page. Note that all of these books have been bought in the past year in Tehran (Enghelaab). Here is the list of names I checked for curious: Nasim Daavari AbooToraab Khosravi NikAahang Kowsar Seyyed Ebraahim Nabavi (3) Jey Di Salinjer (8) Ahmad Golshiri Hooshang Golshiri (6) Mostafaa Mastoor (4) Mishel Foko Maani Haghighi M. Aazaad va Said Tavakkoli Asadollaah Amraaii Reymond Kaarver (4) Farzaane Taaheri Ja'far Modarres Saadeghi Shirin Ta'aavoni (Khaaleghi) Meelaad Zakariaa (:D) Mohammad Najafi Itaalo Kaalvino (3) Mohsen Ebraahim Seyyed Mohammad Ali Jamalzaadeh Kort Vone-gaat Joyner Eyn. Alef. Bahraami Negaar Saadeghi Ali Abdollaahi Hermaan Hese Keykaavos Jahaandaari Haaynrish Bol (3) Naataali Choobineh Ahmad Shamlou (5) Fedriko Gaarsiaa Lorkaa Abdolkarim Soroush (2) Iniaatsio Siloneh (2) Mehdi Sahaabi (2) Mohammad Ghaazi Simon Dobovaar Roman Gaari Soroush Habibi Tooraj Rahnamaa Farzaad Hemmati MohammadRezaa Farzaad Feredrish Vilhelm Niche Dariush Ashouri Abbaas Ma'roufi Zoyaa Pirzaad (2) Simin Daaneshvar Bozorg Alavi GholaamHossein Saa'edi Saadegh Hedaayat (2) Noam Chaamski Koorosh Safavi Ahmad Kasravi MohammadRezaa Baateni MohammadRezaa Mohammadi-Far (9) Aandri Taarkofski Hooshang Hesaami YaarAli PoorMoghaddam (5) ... So, here it is. Do you still say "all the time"? If you still insist on that, I'm afraid your opinion should not be counted, because apparently it's not the practice in Tehran. behdad On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, C Bobroff wrote: > On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, Roozbeh Pournader wrote: > > > Many > > other things may also be optional (like how to write "ordibehesht", > > "zi-hajje", or "hejdah"), but we are only allowing one, > > There is no comparison between these and the personal name topic. > You are giving incomplete and wrong information. > And you have every right to do so too so don't let me stop you. However, > now that I've pointed it out, I know that even though I'm not going > to say another word on this topic, you'll fix it. How do I know? I've come > to know your ways very well after so many years. You'll see. > > > > "all the time". Sorry! > > > > Then you need to define all the time. I don't see a Kasra in the > > author's name on this book that is sitting on my desk. > > Well, "all the time" does not, in fact, mean "all the time" in English. > It just means "all the time." You know, a synonym for "sometimes!" > Why do you have to always be so hard on the poor molla from Qazvin? > > -Connie > ___ > PersianComputing mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing > > --behdad behdad.org ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Locale requirement of Persian in Iran, first public draft
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, Roozbeh Pournader wrote: > > Arabic? For example Pashto or Ordu? > > Yes, all those script are called Arabic in scientific circles. No, the others are, in scientific circles said to be in "Perso-Arabic script." You can also say "a modified form of the Arabic script" but that is what is meant by "Perso-Arabic script." Just "Arabic script" only applies to the Arabic language. Your Persian-knowing readers of the draft will know what you mean if you just say "khatt-e `arabi" however, I recommend you put "Perso-Arabic script" (in English) or "modified Arabic script" so that if the draft gets translated into some other language, the people less familiar with Persian will understand and that will make its way back into the translation. -Connie ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Locale requirement of Persian in Iran, first public draft
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, Roozbeh Pournader wrote: > Many > other things may also be optional (like how to write "ordibehesht", > "zi-hajje", or "hejdah"), but we are only allowing one, There is no comparison between these and the personal name topic. You are giving incomplete and wrong information. And you have every right to do so too so don't let me stop you. However, now that I've pointed it out, I know that even though I'm not going to say another word on this topic, you'll fix it. How do I know? I've come to know your ways very well after so many years. You'll see. > > "all the time". Sorry! > > Then you need to define all the time. I don't see a Kasra in the > author's name on this book that is sitting on my desk. Well, "all the time" does not, in fact, mean "all the time" in English. It just means "all the time." You know, a synonym for "sometimes!" Why do you have to always be so hard on the poor molla from Qazvin? -Connie ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, Hooman Mehr wrote: > Assuming the > heated reaction we saw here is an indication of the possible general > public reaction, How do you account for the preference for Arabic Yeh and Kaf by 99.9% of the populatation. Do you think they're even going to read the draft? -Connie ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Mirroring in Unicode
Short of missing something on the list, that would be me providing alternatives to Apple standard keyboards. But they are not "fix" of existing standards. In fact, they are not standard at all! But you are right. This is a minor issue and can be fixed. I can do it for Mac community but I rather ask Apple to do it in its original issue. My concern is more to do with different approaches in dealing with mirroring characters. The point being, it doesn't seem to be the way mirroring characters are mapped on MS keyboards. And most of the web-pages are typed by MS keyboards. Am I on the right track? Behnam On 12-Jun-04, at 10:54 AM, Hooman Mehr wrote: Hi, I checked it and can confirm that Apple's ISIRI 2901 keyboard has a bug in this regard. The Persian opening parenthesis in ISIRI 2901 is located on shit-0 and closing parenthesis on shift-9, but Apple's implementation have them reversed. This is a minor issue. The keyboard file is an XML file that can be easily edited with sys. admin. privileges. I think someone already posted information on a fixed and enhanced Persian Mac OS X keyboard on the list. - Hooman Mehr ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
On Sat, 2004-06-12 at 19:04, Roozbeh Pournader wrote: > Since you are a linguist, I wish to refer you to a linguistic text, > Daniels and Bright's "The World's Writing Systems", Oxford University > Press, 1996, ISBN 0195079930. Please read Section 50, "Arabic Writing". ... and section 62, "Adaptation of Arabic Script". roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Mirroring in Unicode
Hi, I checked it and can confirm that Apple's ISIRI 2901 keyboard has a bug in this regard. The Persian opening parenthesis in ISIRI 2901 is located on shit-0 and closing parenthesis on shift-9, but Apple's implementation have them reversed. This is a minor issue. The keyboard file is an XML file that can be easily edited with sys. admin. privileges. I think someone already posted information on a fixed and enhanced Persian Mac OS X keyboard on the list. - Hooman Mehr On Jun 12, 2004, at 6:12 PM, Behnam wrote: On 12-Jun-04, at 8:50 AM, Hooman Mehr wrote: On the other hand, I suspect you have font related issues. read below... This whole thing means that on Mac platform we will see the wrong parenthesis on Persian web-pages forever! Part of the issue you are experiencing could be related to fonts. Persian/Arabic Apple fonts need a suitable character property table to identify mirrored glyphs and behave correctly. Please compare the behavior of Geeza Pro standard system font with the fonts you are using. If they are different it is because of the missing or improperly formed 'prop' table in the font. (http://developer.apple.com/fonts/TTRefMan/RM06/Chap6prop.html) If this is the case let me know to see how I can help fix them. I do all my tests with Geeza Pro and ISIRI keyboard does produce the opposite of intended parenthesis with Geeza Pro. Apple Persian keyboard produces the intended one because as I said it is mapped in the opposite way. My other fonts behave similarly which, I suppose, is good news! Behnam P/S I'm very interested to present this discussion to Apple developer and I'm working on it. ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 09:01, Peyman wrote: > Conclusion: You can say that the origin of our alphabet is Arabic but > you can not claim that our writing system is Arabic. Our writing > system is Persian khaat e farsi. It is what my teacher Dr. Safavi as a > linguist says in his book and what I also say as a linguist. Well, I wish to emphasize that our writing system should be described as "Arabic" in certain contexts, like when used in internationalized computer systems. Since you are a linguist, I wish to refer you to a linguistic text, Daniels and Bright's "The World's Writing Systems", Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0195079930. Please read Section 50, "Arabic Writing". > Dr Bateni proposed a minor change to our writing system long ago in > order to better serve the Persian language; and they ignored him and > fired him from the Tehran university because of political and > religious red lines. Please provide details. Linguistic details, at least. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Mirroring in Unicode
On 12-Jun-04, at 8:50 AM, Hooman Mehr wrote: On the other hand, I suspect you have font related issues. read below... This whole thing means that on Mac platform we will see the wrong parenthesis on Persian web-pages forever! Part of the issue you are experiencing could be related to fonts. Persian/Arabic Apple fonts need a suitable character property table to identify mirrored glyphs and behave correctly. Please compare the behavior of Geeza Pro standard system font with the fonts you are using. If they are different it is because of the missing or improperly formed 'prop' table in the font. (http://developer.apple.com/fonts/TTRefMan/RM06/Chap6prop.html) If this is the case let me know to see how I can help fix them. I do all my tests with Geeza Pro and ISIRI keyboard does produce the opposite of intended parenthesis with Geeza Pro. Apple Persian keyboard produces the intended one because as I said it is mapped in the opposite way. My other fonts behave similarly which, I suppose, is good news! Behnam P/S I'm very interested to present this discussion to Apple developer and I'm working on it. ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
On Sat, 2004-06-12 at 12:14, Hooman Mehr wrote: > c) The phrase does not need to be a literal translation of "Arabic > Script" I don't necessarily agree. Nor does Behdad, it seems. > I vote against using "arabi" to name the family of > scripts that our script belongs to. We thank you for your stance, but the FarsiWeb project is not a democratic institution, nor you are a member ;-) Honestly, you should try to convince me and Behdad to get the thing changed. It's us who need to defend the text in several circles, and we can't do that if we are not convinced. > I am personally inclined towards a new and unfamiliar (but sounding > familiar) term without using the word "Khatt". That may work. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khatt e Farsi -- was khaat e Farsi
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 21:06, Ali A Khanban wrote: > Well, I am afraid that may cause some problems in the future, especially > some ugly political ones. Let me tell you a story. The first time we > tried to approach High Council of Informatics "showraaye aaliye > anformaatik" to discuss a Unicode proposal, they were against using > Unicode, just because the letters were named "Arabic letter ...". They > were of course mistaken, and it took a long time and effort to achieve > their support. I am sure Roozbeh still remembers those times. Sure I do. But the times are now different. There are new organizations, like the Language and Computer Council at the Persian Academy and the Technical Council of the Persian Language at Supreme Council of ICT. These new councils, filled with linguists and technologists, now understand the issue: they need a better name than just "khatt-e faarsi", and they call it "khatt-e arabi". They have also seen what Unicode has done for them on the web, and now see that names of technical things better be not a matter of nationalistic pride. > Now, first of all, we do not talk about script family. Everyone agrees > that Persian script belongs to the Arabic scripts family. We just say > "Persian script", and in a note we explain that this script belongs to > the Arabic scripts family. Please note that unlike western scripts that > can be called Latin script, there are many national and political > barriers and dilemmas, which prevent the nations on this side of the > world to call their script Arabic script. Choosing a very liberal, and > somehow radical, approach at the moment doesn't solve all of them! Well, it all seems that we are talking about different things when we use the term "script". I guess if we define the thing we are talking about in the document, things may get much easier. > Secondly, as I mentioned before, we clearly have in the constitution > that the name of both language and script are Farsi. If we provide a > document that will become official and in which refer to our script as > Arabic (no matter how we explain it in a note), that surely will have > some side-effects. This document is not official. It is a "recommendation" of Sharif FarsiWeb, Inc., and will only be a requirement of the Persian Linux project at the High Council of Informatics. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 20:31, C Bobroff wrote: > I believe Roozbeh, while typing the document was attempting to translate > "Perso-Arabic script" into Persian. Not an easy job. No, I was translating "Arabic script" into Persian. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 20:09, Ordak D. Coward wrote: > I am confused! Why people spell "khaat" with two a's? First I though > it is a typo, but it seems everybody is writing it like that. They perhaps wish to write it with two "t"s, but miss and type two "a".s > In my > opinion, this by itself makes Kufi a different 'script' than modern > Arabic. Then you may also wish to differentiate Gothic from normal Latin. But sorry, Unicode doesn't differentiate these, nor should good software. The logic is the same, the semantics are the same, so we can call it the same "script" (in Unicode terms). > Now, I guess my original suggestion of "Naskh" is technically correct, > if the following can add any weight to that choice: > http://www.ancientscripts.com/arabic.html > http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=56293 No, Nastalig is OK for Persian, so is Tahriri. We shouldn't require Naskh, or restrict Persian writing to Naskh. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
OT: GNOME/GNU (was Re: Mirroring in Unicode)
> our target system (GNOME/GNU/Linux) GNOME is a GNU project, of course. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Farsi vs Persian (Re: khaat e Farsi)
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 12:32, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > Don't know why, but it reminds me of the Persian vs. Farsi > problem... BTW, I just got my hand on the proceedings of The First Workshop on Persian Language and Computer, which took place on May 25 and 26 in the Faculty of Literature and Humanities of Tehran University. Most of the articles contain the word "faarsi" in the Persian title, and not a single one of the 58 refers to it as "Farsi" in the English title. They all call it "Persian". This is good news. Almost no one is *that* ignorant. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Mirroring in Unicode
On Jun 12, 2004, at 4:14 PM, Behnam wrote: I had discussion with an Apple developer on this subject. She insisted that this is the way Unicode wants the mirroring characters to behave and that Apple has no intention to change its implementation of them. There has been a misunderstanding in your conversation and in a sense both of you are right. As I develop this topic further you'll better understand it. I hope she would read my posts (if she has any influence on Apple) so that something would get fixed on Apple's side as well. On the other hand, what she needs to realize (along with most of the other developers) is: Unicode does not have to dictate the user interface of text input and editing. The user interface of text editing can be vastly improved if we properly design a GUI-optimized model to hide the true underlying Unicode bidi semantics in favor of easier and more user friendly semantics while maintaining 100% Unicode compatibility. On the other hand, I suspect you have font related issues. read below... This whole thing means that on Mac platform we will see the wrong parenthesis on Persian web-pages forever! Part of the issue you are experiencing could be related to fonts. Persian/Arabic Apple fonts need a suitable character property table to identify mirrored glyphs and behave correctly. Please compare the behavior of Geeza Pro standard system font with the fonts you are using. If they are different it is becuase of the missing or improperly formed 'prop' table in the font. (http://developer.apple.com/fonts/TTRefMan/RM06/Chap6prop.html) If this is the case let me know to see how I can help fix them. I guess that along the effort in finding a proper solution for handling of mirroring characters, there has to be an effort to remove this useless mirroring effect in Unicode altogether. Don't even think about that. In the text stream level using logical opening and closing parenthesis instead of visual left and right parenthesis is actually very helpful in keeping the logical text processing model simple and elegant. Also, too many things already depend on it. We need to address this issue in text input/editing services of the operating system without touching Unicode. As I mentioned Unicode is not at fault here. The current assumption that the Unicode model necessarily applies to the user interface is the problem. - Hooman Mehr ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 10:26, Hooman Mehr wrote: > If we don't like the Arabic word, we may substitute something like > Islamic and call it Islamic Script. I don't mean to give it any > religious weight, but just substituting the physical origin (Arabia) > by culture that carried along this script into our country and a lot > of other countries and caused a single writing system to become a > family of closely related writing systems. Well, usually the script is religion-based. Currently, Latin usually means christian or secular, Cyrillic means communist, Arabic means Muslim, Hebrew means Jewish, ... But sorry, we don't want to invent anything here. > I suggest Roozbeh ask more expert (linguist) opinion to see if they > have a Persian term for the above concept -- at least within their > professional linguist circles. Already done. They prefer to call this the Arabic script, to differentiate it with writing the language in the Latin script, for example. BTW, experts don't necessary mean linguists here. There are also the "adib"s, which sometimes have different opinions. Some of the "adib"s may prefer "khatt-e faarsi", I'm sure. > This confusion among some potential audience of the document also > indicates that you may need to add a footnote to explain the meaning > of Arabic Script as intended in the locale document. Thanks to the finding of Ali Khanban, we will put that footnote, also referring to the text of the constitution and clarifying the context. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaate farsi
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 21:46, Peyman wrote: > The attached .jpg is a text from the book "pishineye zabane farsi" > written by Dr. Safavi. The text speaks about "styles", not "scripts". In other words, the text you forwarded is one level lower in the tree. In other words, the Arabic script may be written in different styles, Kufi, Naskhi, Suls, Nastaliq, ... The "Persian" that Dr Safavi specifies is in that classification. > PS: Sorry if the jpg quality is not good because the list doesn't > accept files bigger than 40KB You can put them somewhere on the web and send a URL for files larger than 40KB. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Locale requirement of Persian in Iran, first public draft
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 21:28, Ali A Khanban wrote: > Again, I'd like to know if other Arabic-based scripts, such as Pashto > and Ordu, call themselves "Arabic script" in their locale. There doesn't exist a standardized locale for Urdu (or any non-standard one I may know of), but Pashto has one (which I helped prepare and is approved by their ministry of communication), and calls the script Arabic. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Locale requirement of Persian in Iran, first public draft
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 21:03, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > They all call it Latin Script ("khatte laatin"), right? BTW, while "khatte laatin" is OK, "khatte laatini" is preferred. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Locale requirement of Persian in Iran, first public draft
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 20:31, Ali A Khanban wrote: > but are all the scripts with their root in Arabic script called > Arabic? For example Pashto or Ordu? Yes, all those script are called Arabic in scientific circles. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
[Fwd: Re: IRI funded projects like Persian Linux (Was Re: something else)]
I think Mehran intended to send this to the list. roozbeh -Forwarded Message- From: Mehran Mehr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Roozbeh Pournader <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: IRI funded projects like Persian Linux (Was Re: something else) Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:01:29 +0430 Our Patched Pango is a black-box. And I think it's enough. But about feeding the patches: We try hard to feed the patches (You can search GNOME bugzilla for Soheil Hassas Yeganeh). BUT Owen Taylor is a very oveloaded person. These are some of the consequences. 1- Weak Maintenance of code and Slow Improvment pace (Owen can work at most 24 hours daily) 2- Undocumented Architecture and Design Concepts for Integrity Checking of the patches (Reasonable, because maintenance of documentations is much harder than maintenance of code) It's time for Owen to hand over Pango to another person (like Noah, or ...). --Mehran Roozbeh Pournader wrote: >On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 09:37, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > > >>BTW, their patched Pango is next to useless to me, since there's >>no patch provided, no information about when they did check out >>Pango, etc. Roozbeh, can you ask them for a set of patches >>instead? >> >> > >Mehran Mehr and Soheil Hassas Yegane are members of this list. I hope >they'll answer. > > > >>I can probably help feeding the patches to Owen Taylor. >> >> > >All but one of the patches are already in Pango. The other patch was >something Owen didn't like and said he'll do in another way. It's in his >TODO for next minor release of Pango. > >roozbeh > > > ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Locale requirement of Persian in Iran, first public draft
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 19:50, C Bobroff wrote: > You can not specify one way in this case with personal names when it is > optional. Connie, you are not understand the purpose of the specification. Many other things may also be optional (like how to write "ordibehesht", "zi-hajje", or "hejdah"), but we are only allowing one, only because if two applications want to conform to the specification, they have (almost) the same behavior. > You don't have to require or forbid, you may say "acceptable" or "common". We are not describing the practice. We are recommending one option over another. A specification, or a standard, does require and forbid. > "all the time". Sorry! Then you need to define all the time. I don't see a Kasra in the author's name on this book that is sitting on my desk. roozbeh ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Mirroring in Unicode
On 12-Jun-04, at 5:35 AM, Hooman Mehr wrote: - The user-friendly solution involves somewhat moving away from abstract concepts and embracing concrete objects. Lets delve deeper: What do you have on your keyboard that identifies a parenthesis? You have just a physical mark, a concrete object for each one. They do not unambiguously refer to either opening or closing parenthesis. Their meaning depends on the current *mode*. This means that Unicode results-in a modal situation without adequate feedback which I hope everybody agrees is undesirable in most circumstances. Compared to Microsoft implementation, Apple Macintosh implements mirroring Unicode characters differently. RTL keyboard layouts of Macintosh, including Persian keyboard actually places the opposite shape of parenthesis or bracket etc. on the keyboard in order to produce the intended shape in RTL mode. This is indeed very confusing. When Apple added Persian ISIRI 2901 to its latest OS, being ISIRI standard, it is implemented exactly as is. As a result, parenthesis on this keyboard produce the opposite of the intended shape in RTL mode. I had discussion with an Apple developer on this subject. She insisted that this is the way Unicode wants the mirroring characters to behave and that Apple has no intention to change its implementation of them. This whole thing means that on Mac platform we will see the wrong parenthesis on Persian web-pages forever! I guess that along the effort in finding a proper solution for handling of mirroring characters, there has to be an effort to remove this useless mirroring effect in Unicode altogether. I know of some Jewish foes that are not too happy about this either! Behnam ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Mirroring in Unicode
Hi Behdad, I didn't originally notice this part of your post. My apologies. KDE's example is a bad realization of a good idea which causes the idea to be discredited. I have an implementation that have been working for years. [1] My implementation looks more like patching a user hostile assumption in Unicode design [2], but it works flawlessly. KDE's example, does not prove the idea wrong, its implementation is flawed. On the other hand, once you find an implementation that really works, you would never look back. I will share my solution in the Persian GUI spec document and for better or worse it may become the standard behavior. Now that you brought this up, I feel I am obligated to participate actively in its proper implementation to save it from ending up like KDE's. Let me just give some hints about what goes wrong when you try to stay true to Unicode when dealing with text input/edit user interface: - Most average users have trouble handling and using abstract concepts. - Unicode is talking about logical things and abstractions a lot: Opening and closing parenthesis are concepts "(" and ")" are visual concrete objects. For a bi-di text the same closing parenthesis concept may sometimes result "(" and sometimes ")" -- two different objects in the physical world. - The user-friendly solution involves somewhat moving away from abstract concepts and embracing concrete objects. Lets delve deeper: What do you have on your keyboard that identifies a parenthesis? You have just a physical mark, a concrete object for each one. They do not unambiguously refer to either opening or closing parenthesis. Their meaning depends on the current *mode*. This means that Unicode results-in a modal situation without adequate feedback which I hope everybody agrees is undesirable in most circumstances. You can see that if we want to make the bi-di computing more user friendly, we need to architect a mode-less, WYSIWYG user interface for bidi text input/edit. To achieve that, we have no choice but to go against some Unicode principles and replace some abstract concepts with concrete ones in the context of user interface. This does not mean that we have to change or violate Unicode but means that we need to do more work on text input/edit engine besides blindly relying on FriBiDi to create a clean Unicode text stream in the back-end. Please note that this does not mean that Unicode is bad or wrong, but it is not designed to be optimal for Interactive text input/edit. This also does not mean that an optimal text input/edit is impossible with Unicode as the back-end text stream/storage model. - Hooman Mehr [1] I admit that it is working in a controlled environment and is not stress tested. Also, post processing of the text stream can wreck the text stream if it does not observe some rules. Something very hard to enforce on database engines that convert Unicode to some other (usually 8-bit) internal encoding and later convert it back to Unicode. [2] Unicode uses some good principles to create a logically clean text stream while reducing duplicated characters. The actual implementation does not always stay true to the principles which makes the actual Unicode (as it exists today) far uglier than it could have been. The bad news is that some of those principles adversely affect bi-di text in a fundamental way. Unicode has been struggling for years to refine its bi-di handling to the point of today's maturity and Behdad, you have been a great contributor with your FriBiDi and other efforts. But the fact is, those principles are not a natural fit for bi-di text. We can easily see this. Look at the mirrored glyph issue for example. On Jun 12, 2004, at 11:42 AM, Ordak D. Coward wrote: Hi Behdad, On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 05:34:42 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Yes this has been the rule for a few years, but everyone is so scared about auto-inserting marks and later dealing with them, without cluttering the text much. One such implementation is KDE's parantheses fixing idea based on keyboard layout which is considered quite a failure (read on Arabeyes wiki page for Qt bugs). I finally figured out that if I insert either an RLE or an LRE character right before each open parenthesis and a PDF character right after each close parenthesis then all parenthesis are matched and also their nesting level is preserved as well. Is this something guranteed, or is that I could not find a bad example where this breaks? Also, is this the KDE's parenthesis fixing idea you are refering to above? -- ODC ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 12:14:40 +0430, Hooman Mehr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > More clarifications, questions and opinions: > > 1) Clarification: Are we talking English or Persian? > > a) The English name of the concept in the locale document is "Arabic > Script" and it is not up to us to discuss or change it. It is already > decided and used a long time ago. (So Connie don't worry, it won't > create the kind of confusion you feared) > > b) We can only put a Persian phrase we standardize for referring to > that concept in our own locale spec. > > c) The phrase does not need to be a literal translation of "Arabic > Script" > > 2) Observation/Retreat: Nationalistic considerations. > > I confess that I underestimated nationalist feelings that the word > "Arabic" carries among Iranians. So, I change my stance and think that > we have to avoid anything that can hurt people's feelings. Assuming the > heated reaction we saw here is an indication of the possible general > public reaction, I vote against using "arabi" to name the family of > scripts that our script belongs to. > > 3) Question: "Khatt-e Farsi" overload issue > > Issue: If we use "Khatt-e Farsi" for the family of scripts and again > "Khatt-e Farsi" for Persian variant of it, the two will not be > distinguished. [1] > > Question: Are you comfortable with this overload of concepts? Should we > ignore this issue? I personally do not mind using the same term for these two concepts. > > 4) Call for fresh ideas: > > a) Is there any idea besides "Khatt-e Farsi" and "Khatt-e Naskh" [2]? > b) Does anybody know of a phrase that better matches the concept at > hand? > c) Can't we come up with a word other than "Khatt" to call this concept > of a script family? I noticed that an old Persian word for Script is 'dabeere' spelled dal be ye r ye heh We can use that as well to call Arabic script, 'dabeere ye faarsee',. > I am personally inclined towards a new and unfamiliar (but sounding > familiar) term without using the word "Khatt". > > - Hooman Mehr > > Endnotes: > [1] For the information of people quoting constitution, what is called > "Khatt-e Farsi" is the second concept (Persian variant of the Arabic > Script) not the first one. As far as I am aware, there is no official > name for the general family of scripts that encompasses ours. > > [2] I still oppose "Khatt-e Naskh" for the following reasons: > 1) As a script name, it is used in the context of evolution of writing > systems not present day distinction among script families. > 2) It is confused with calligraphic style with the same name. The name > is well known to ordinary people as calligraphic style but never heard > by general public as script name. So, the chance of confusion is > initially almost 100%. > 3) The key: I am personally inclined towards a new and unfamiliar term. > Because the concept is not truly familiar for normal people. "Khatt-e > Naskh" is too familiar in a different context, I don't like using it > for an unfamiliar concept. > You may not find my reasons compelling but I am not trying to convince > anybody, I am just saying why I am not still convinced and probably > will never be because the third and the key part is mostly a matter of > preference and not logic. > > > > ___ > PersianComputing mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing > ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: khaat e Farsi
More clarifications, questions and opinions: 1) Clarification: Are we talking English or Persian? a) The English name of the concept in the locale document is "Arabic Script" and it is not up to us to discuss or change it. It is already decided and used a long time ago. (So Connie don't worry, it won't create the kind of confusion you feared) b) We can only put a Persian phrase we standardize for referring to that concept in our own locale spec. c) The phrase does not need to be a literal translation of "Arabic Script" 2) Observation/Retreat: Nationalistic considerations. I confess that I underestimated nationalist feelings that the word "Arabic" carries among Iranians. So, I change my stance and think that we have to avoid anything that can hurt people's feelings. Assuming the heated reaction we saw here is an indication of the possible general public reaction, I vote against using "arabi" to name the family of scripts that our script belongs to. 3) Question: "Khatt-e Farsi" overload issue Issue: If we use "Khatt-e Farsi" for the family of scripts and again "Khatt-e Farsi" for Persian variant of it, the two will not be distinguished. [1] Question: Are you comfortable with this overload of concepts? Should we ignore this issue? 4) Call for fresh ideas: a) Is there any idea besides "Khatt-e Farsi" and "Khatt-e Naskh" [2]? b) Does anybody know of a phrase that better matches the concept at hand? c) Can't we come up with a word other than "Khatt" to call this concept of a script family? I am personally inclined towards a new and unfamiliar (but sounding familiar) term without using the word "Khatt". - Hooman Mehr Endnotes: [1] For the information of people quoting constitution, what is called "Khatt-e Farsi" is the second concept (Persian variant of the Arabic Script) not the first one. As far as I am aware, there is no official name for the general family of scripts that encompasses ours. [2] I still oppose "Khatt-e Naskh" for the following reasons: 1) As a script name, it is used in the context of evolution of writing systems not present day distinction among script families. 2) It is confused with calligraphic style with the same name. The name is well known to ordinary people as calligraphic style but never heard by general public as script name. So, the chance of confusion is initially almost 100%. 3) The key: I am personally inclined towards a new and unfamiliar term. Because the concept is not truly familiar for normal people. "Khatt-e Naskh" is too familiar in a different context, I don't like using it for an unfamiliar concept. You may not find my reasons compelling but I am not trying to convince anybody, I am just saying why I am not still convinced and probably will never be because the third and the key part is mostly a matter of preference and not logic. ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
Re: Mirroring in Unicode
Hi Behdad, On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 05:34:42 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Yes this has been the rule for a few years, but everyone is so > scared about auto-inserting marks and later dealing with them, > without cluttering the text much. One such implementation is > KDE's parantheses fixing idea based on keyboard layout which is > considered quite a failure (read on Arabeyes wiki page for Qt > bugs). I finally figured out that if I insert either an RLE or an LRE character right before each open parenthesis and a PDF character right after each close parenthesis then all parenthesis are matched and also their nesting level is preserved as well. Is this something guranteed, or is that I could not find a bad example where this breaks? Also, is this the KDE's parenthesis fixing idea you are refering to above? -- ODC ___ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing