From: oueichek@imag.fr (Ibaa Oueichek)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon
Subject: Re: Arabic characters on the Net
Date: 8 Oct 92 11:49:49 GMT
Organization: IMAG Institute, University of Grenoble, France
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

[i'm crossposting it to soc.culture.Arabic, i think people there may be
interested by the subject]
Alexandre Khalil (9999sc01@uhdvx3.dt.uh.edu) wrote:
: 
:   The terminals in our labs are for the most part DEC VT2xx/3xx's that support 
: down-loadable character sets -that is you can define an additional set of 
: characters apart from Latin, say Arabic and use it-. This technical peculiarity
: would make it possible to mail, read/write news and generally use the Arabic
: character set in its native form with the (our) current hardware, provided the 
: right software is driving it.
: 
:   At least one other CS major on the Net -marHaba iba@- was interested and 
: actually has a similar project in the make. 

 That's ME :-). Ahleen Alex, keefak ? .
 Well, sorry if i'm late, but there's a problem with our newsserver, there are
plenty of posts who don't arrive. And those who pass arrive a week later, i've
just read this one, and it seems it has been posted a week ago (but i think
there's no problem in the other sens, would you please confirm that ?).

 Now to the serious stuff. Let me expose my "critics" (rather my feedback, and
the result of 4 days of effort) to Alex's idea. Alex's idea was the following:
use a "dumb" terminal, download the Arabic font and let the application handle
the problem of the 'script' (script is the technical word used for language).
So the application will test the current script and sends the appropriate
commands to the terminal. This approach represents two problems :
 - The application MUST know that it's writing in Arabic script, so Applications
must be rewritten to resolve this problem. Maybe we can avoid it by redirecting
the output of the original program to a 'script server' that will intercept the
characters and send them to the terminal. We have to try.
 - Secondly, and THIS is the problem, is the complexity of the concerned font,
because it needs to include all the poosible combinaisons for all the letters
so the program can send a command like "draw me a 'K' in the middle of the
name". The terminal Must have this representation to be able to do it, and
it seems that we can't upload more than 92 characters in a VTxx terminal. This
is not enough, i've tried to "reinvent the wheel" and find a compressed
representation that will give the same form for the character when it's
possible. The result was HORRIBLE, with the maximum compression (drawing T
in the middle the same as T in the beginning for example) i ended with 82
characters. Without numbers  & symbols (from 0x20 to 0x40) and without any
tashkeel. To give an idea of what's normally needed to make a "good" Arabic
font : Apple uses an internal 256 characters font in their Arabic System
(i've checked the bitmap of a font, and all the avaialbe space is used).

 Conclusion : It's feasable. But will be VERY complicated, and the result may
not worth the effort.

  Now, i'll speak about my previous experience in Arabic software in general,
and the solution for the problem as i see it. There is something called ARAB
terminals (one of the main manufacturers is Alis techno*s in Canada). It has
the fonts and the script control as a built-in (ROM) feature. The one i've
used extensively offers vt220-vt100-vt52 emulation with 7 or 8 coding
standards (those that i'm posting come with it). The MAIN problem of Arab
(& Farsi) script isn't writing from right to left, but the font size and the
contextual dependance of characters forms, which's very difficult to add as
an external feature. In brief (:-), i know it's long) the manufacturer of the
terminal managed to include in the ROMs the solution of the two problems i've
already stated :
 - script management (send commands in relation with the current script, Latin
 of Arabic).
 - Font size, given the form of the characters i've seen, they are quite
 acceptable. I think they use a rich internal representation like Apple.

 Summary : Alex's idea can be perfect if we can load more than 92 chars to a
 "dumb" terminal.
 Those terminals are quite impressive, we've written tons of LISP software
in Arabic (given it was a natural language processing program, it gives more
sens to write it  in Arabic). Plenty of Arabic data bases and such are handeled
to the enduser which is supposed to own such a terminal.
 Given that it's impossible to ask each netter who wishs to write, read in
Arabic script to acquire an Arabic terminal. A good solution is to emulate
these terminals on a PC or a workstation. I've been working on such a beast
for Macintosh for 6 months but i've interrupted my work because i had no
access to a Mac during the summer, and (unfortunately) i'll not have access
anymore till i purchase my personal Mac. Maybe at the end of the year i'll
go to the US and buy one from there. It emulates vt52 terminals and has
two Arabic coding sets available (including the ASMO-449-PLUS). But i lakes
several feature : it can't dial yet and doesn't handle "tashkeel" correctly
(this is impossible to do if you use the Mac Arabic OS, unless you rewrite
their script manager :-)). Once i have my Mac, things can go very fast and
i can have it fully operational in one month. VT101 will be added and non-
fixed width fonts support can be done easily. But i'll have to rewrite some
of the code because it's under copyright protection. If anyone has further
question please email me. I think everyone should be already bored to death
with my "more than technical" post.
 PS : I'm seriously examining the possibilty to rewrite some parts of the
script manager to resolve the problem of Tashkeel. If i do that, then a
serious possibility exist that i write an X/MOTIF based emulator. But i'll
need time. (Please, don't ask me about windows, i'm allergic to MicroSoft
products, after all you can run FREE unix with X on any 386 PC, check at
comp.os.linux).


: 
:   I am now asking the readers of the group that are interested for help in 
: studying the possibility of implementing this manipulation of Arabic characters 
: in their native form.
: 
:   This would include:
: 
:    - a study of the different solutions that are already available for other
:    character sets, e.g.: Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and -yes, behold- Hebrew.
I wonder how could they do for Japanese stuff, the Japanese script (Kan-Ji)is 
too large to fit into 92 characters font. nothing spectacular about Hebrew, it
has the same charactersitic of Latin scrit, except that it writes from right to
left.
: 
:    - a study of the technical specifications of the terminal or terminal 
:    emulator that would allow the display of Arabic characters.
: 
:    - modification/writing of an editor to manipulate Arabic characters.
: 
:   All of you scl-ers that have been exposed to this problem and its 
: technicalities and are interested, I would like to discuss it with you.
: 
:   Please, e-mail: I will post back as needed.
: 
:   alla ya@tikum al-@aafye
 Ahleen, ta@aa kel yom.

PS2: Alex, All-h ykhalleek, feek tredd @alayee aoual ma tshoof hal "@lak"
yalli ba@atto ?.

Salam for everyone.
Ibaa Oueichek.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon