I'm in touch with the nano (pico clone) developers about adding Hebrew
support. They've asked for some help and advice which I know that some
of you are much better equipped than myself to give.

The conversation so far is quoted below. The things that they
particularly need help with are :

Example files in ISO-8859-8 and UTF-8 with a mix of Hebrew and English

An example programme that uses fribidi (with source, of course)

Or best of all, somebody write a bidi patch for nanu and send it to
them.


The problem I foresee with the latter is that nano is developed for
debian, and unless I am out of date fribidi is not yet .deb packaged.


Anyone wishing to contribute any of the above please contact me
personally.



On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, David Benbennick wrote:
> > Feature Request:
> >
> > Hebrew language support.
> 
> I presume you know Hebrew, and have some sort of Hebrew keyboard?  Anyway,
> could you send some example files?  I want a sample file in UTF-8, with
> some Hebrew text mixed in with English.  Also an all-Hebrew file.  And two
> images showing how they should be displayed (if you are using Linux, the
> xwd command takes a screen shot, assuming you have a program that can
> display the text correctly).
> 
> I am almost totally ignorant about how non-English software works.  To
> make Nano support Hebrew, we need to know what it should do.  Some
> questions:
> 
> In a file with mixed Hebrew/English, in the Hebrew areas should the right
> arrow key make the cursor go left?
> 
> In an all Hebrew file, should the text be aligned at the right edge of the
> window?
> 
> As far as I can tell, FriBidi takes a UTF-8 string, and inverts some of it
> to produce a displayable string.  Do you know of any other features of
> FriBidi?  In particular, can it tell us where the cursor should go?  A
> non-trivial example program using FriBidi would be helpful if you know of
> one.


> On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Jordi Mallach wrote:
> > Bug 1:
> > 
> > Does not handle xterm resizing correctly - exhibits all kinds of strange
> > behaviour, both when enlarging and shrinking the window.
> > 
> > Bug 2:
> > 
> > Character position command (Ctrl-C), does not work after resuming from
> > suspend.
> > After resuming from suspend, if Ctrl-C is pressed, there is no visible
> > response whatsoever, and nano continues as if the keystroke had not been
> > issued.
> 
> I can't reproduce these bugs in 1.1.12. Can you test that version and
> confirm? We'd rather get 1.2.0 out some day and not concentrate on 1.0.x
> bugs at this point.
> 
> > Feature Request:
> > 
> > Hebrew language support.
> > 
> > The main challenge with Hebrew is that it is written right to left. A
> > library has been written to handle the requirements of Semitic (Hebrew,
> > Arabic, Farsi) languages and other (left to right) languages in the same
> > document (this concept known as bi-directional text). Basically as soon as
> > you add bidi support it will work with all Semitic languages. The
> > library's homepage is below.
> 
> Hmm. If the bidi community can help us in some way (like patches), I guess
> it'll be done at some point. UTF-8 support in nano is a planned feature,
> but nobody has started working on it... so imagine bidi support...


Then I wrote :

> Thanks for the prompt replies,
> 
> > I presume you know Hebrew, and have some sort of Hebrew keyboard?  Anyway,
> > could you send some example files?  I want a sample file in UTF-8, with
> > some Hebrew text mixed in with English.  Also an all-Hebrew file.  And two
> > images showing how they should be displayed (if you are using Linux, the
> > xwd command takes a screen shot, assuming you have a program that can
> > display the text correctly).
> 
> Fribidi comes with a demo hebrew file and shows what it should
> look like (ISO-8859-8 though, not unicode).
> 
> I'll get to work on providing you with some more extensive samples.
> 
> > In a file with mixed Hebrew/English, in the Hebrew areas should the right
> > arrow key make the cursor go left?
> 
> No, the cursor key functionality should remain the same.
> 
> > In an all Hebrew file, should the text be aligned at the right edge of the
> > window?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > As far as I can tell, FriBidi takes a UTF-8 string, and inverts some of it
> > to produce a displayable string.  Do you know of any other features of
> > FriBidi?
> > In particular, can it tell us where the cursor should go?
> 
> Yes it can. As I understand it all the skeleton stuff needed for a
> bidi editor is in there, not just the displaying of text. A quick check
> through the .h files gives a good idea.
> 
> 
> An example of one of the things it can do (taken from fribidi.h) :
> 
> //  fribidi_xpos_resolve() does the complicated translation of
> //  an x-coordinate, e.g. as received through a mouse press event,
> //  to the logical and the visual position the xcoordinate is closest
> //  to. It will also resolve the direction of the cursor according
> //  to the embedding level of the closest character.
> 
> 
> 
> This function translates between 'visual' and 'logical' positions.
> 
> e.g. if we say capitals are an RTL character set
> 
>           12345678901
> logical : abc DEF ghi
> visual  : abc FED ghi
> 
> x-position 7 visually is actually position 5 logically (ie as stored in
> memory or on disk).
> 
> > A non-trivial example program using FriBidi would be helpful if you
> > know of one.
> 
> There are other people better equipped than me to answer this, for
> example the people who added bidi support to Mozilla and
> OpenOffice. I'll pass on your request to the Israeli Linux mailing list.

-- 
Blessings,                                                   ,&tav;&vav;&kaf;&resh;&bet;
Daniel                                                  &lamed;&alef;&yod;&resh;&alef; &lamed;&alef;&yod;&nun;&dalet;
-
Trust in the Lord with all your heart             &fkaf;&bet;&lamed;¯&lamed;&kaf;&bet; &yod;&yod; &lamed;&alef; &het;&tet;&bet;
do not rely on your own understanding             &fnun;&ayin;&shin;&tav;¯&lamed;&alef; &fkaf;&tav;&nun;&yod;&bet;¯&lamed;&alef;&vav;
Proverbs 3:5                                               &he;:ℷ &yod;&lamed;&shin;&mem;




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