From: oueichek@imag.fr (Ibaa Oueichek)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon
Subject: Re: Some thoughts on Arabic aphabet news reader
Date: 10 Oct 92 21:22:44 GMT
Organization: IMAG Institute, University of Grenoble, France
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

[ I realize that the discussion has started a long time ago, and my post may
arrive a little late, but it's USENET's fault, not mine]


Bassem Medawar (medawar@prism.poly.edu) wrote:
: Since there seems to be a strong interest on scl for an Arabic aphabet news 
: reader let's try to organize the effort so that it does not happen in a
: haphazard fashion.
: 
: First, I recall this topic came up before, cross-posted on sci.  It may
: be worthwhile to investigate where the previous effort has lead before
: we spend energy on a new effort.

 Well, i have a couple of words to say here. I think what we need is to
read news in Arabic, and Arabic news reader will be an overkill.

 Let me explain, I think the best solution would be to delegate the script
handeling task to the TERMINAL (or the display, you can call it as you want).
And leave the main application alone. I've already presented a solution in a 
previous article, based on Arabic terminals, or Arabizing "dumb" (script
ignorant is a better term) vtxx terminal by uploading fonts and intercepting
the characters, or using a terminal emulator on a PC or a work station). If
we can keep the script management task OUT of the application level we'll be
able to everything we want in Arabic. Because programs will pass ASCI codes
between them (newsreaders, mailers, text editors,..etc) while the user will
see Arabic text displayed on the screen. 
  Advantage of this approach :
  - No modification of Applications (it's a very difficult task to write a
  newsreader that integrates script management tasks AND make it run of all
  available platforms).
  - The ability to mix Latin & Arabic text together.

  The transcoding will be on the fly. From my experience with Arabic terminals,
there's a special escape sequence which means "switch to Arabic". If someone
want to write an Arabic message it'll be very easy, he'll just need to insert
the escape sequence (easly feasable under VI or any text editor) before his
text.
  Usually, there are 4 escape sequences :
  - Switch to Arabic.
  - Swithc to Latin.
  - Inject Arabic into Latin text.
  - Inject Latin into Arabic text.

  So it's the text itself that will determine the current script.

 Follows a figure that will better explain (i hope) my point :
: 

	-------      --------			  --------
	|     |VISULA|	    |   ASCII CODES	  |	 |
	|     |<-----|	    | <-----------------  |	 |
	|     |      |      |			  |	 |
	|-----|      |------|			  |------|

	  (A)		(B)			    (C)
        DISPLAY	       SCRIPT			APPLICATION
	(Graphic     PROCESSING		(news, mail,texteditor,..etc)
	or Vtxx)       MODULE



  The user deals with (A). The Graphic, he doesn't care how C sees the data
as long as control data is passed correctly to the Application (ex : newsgroup
should always be written in Latin script). 
  A + B cooperate to give the user the impression that he writes in Arabic.
There are two cases :

 * the display (A) can't distinguish between Latin and Arabic script (thus the
word "dumb"). Then B will be a process running in the background and
intercepting the data comming from the Application (C). The processing is done
ON THE FLY, the terminal will be loaded with an external Arabic font that
contains ALL the possible figures of Arabic characters. (B) will manage to
give orders to A so it will display Arabic text correctly. (idea copyrighted
be Alex Khalil :-))

 * The display is intelligent, or it's a PC emulating an intelligent terminal
(exactly the same thing, intelligent here means "script aware"). The processing
is done also on the fly.

[Notice that this class of solution works with "terminal based" programs, and
not with programs which use special features like xrn which writes text using
X widgets and not the standard I/O library]

  Now, i've posted to comp.terminals to examine the possibility to design and
upload a font to a VTxx  terminal. I didn't recieve answers yet, but i hope
there will be some.

  For the second solution, i'm working on a MAC version. I'm examining the
possibility of an X porting. I hope that a beta release for the Mac version
will be availabe by the end of January.

Well, il est l'heur d'aller faire dodo. See you soon.
Ibaa.
: 
: bassem