http://old.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=vim
VIM supports Arabic as of version 6.2 out of the box. However, if you want to run an older version (for your own reasons), then there is the patch which has been submitted to VIM's author that is incoporated into 6.2 release. Although the VIM Arabic patch does not yet support bidirectionality, using it under mlterm will provide such support.
Go to: http://vim.sourceforge.net/download.php and cick on the 'unix' section, download the following files:
| vim-6.1.tar.bz2 |
| vim-6.1-lang.tar.gz |
Uncompress files:
$ tar jxvf vim-6.1.tar.bz2 $ tar zxvf vim-6.1-lang.tar.gz |
You can download the patch here: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/arabeyes/arabic_shape61.tar.gz?download
$ cd YOUR_VIM_ROOT_DIR $ patch -b -p0 < arabic_shape61.patch |
$ configure --enable-multibyte --with-features=big $ make && make install |
You can either start VIM in console mode or graphical mode. While the graphical mode has a nicer interface (to some people), it does not support bidirectional text. Running vim under mlterm will automatically give you this support.
$ ./vim -g
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:set guifont=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-arabeyes-1
:set encoding=utf-8
:set keymap=arabic
:set arabic
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Note you can include the above 4 commands as-is in your ~/.vimrc file
:set norightleft
:set rightleft
:help
:q!
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Use Ctrl-^ to switch between Arabic and English.
http://www.m17n.org/emacs-bidi/index.html
The instructions to compile and install 'emacs-bidi' are all available on the above referenced website. After downloading the emacs-bidi.tar.gz package, you do:
$ tar zxvf emacs-bidi.tar.gz $ cd emacs-bidi $ ./configure $ make && make install |
You can skip the fonts part since it is the same font file that is referenced above in the 'Bitmap Fonts'. However, Emacs may not be able to automatically recognize the font in the "Font Menu". Instead you can place this in your ~/.Xdefaults
Emacs*font: -m17n-mule-medium-r-normal--20-140-100-100-p-90-iso10646-1
#Emacs*font: -microsoft-tahoma-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6
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You can uncomment the second line in the above example and comment the first one, if you want to use the MS Tahoma font instead. This is simply to demonstrate that you can use any font available to your system. However, I wouldn't recommend it since it slows Emacs-Bidi considerably.
'mutt' supports UTF-8 properly as of version 1.4. If the binary distribution you got does not seem to work like you expect it to, grab the source and compile with the following:
$ ./configure --enable-locales-fix --without-wc-funcs [6] $ make && make install |
Also, note that mutt does not have bidi support, which means that it is best used under an x terminal such as mlterm or BiCon (for the console).
If you are unable to read certain messages, it will probably be because the person who sent you the email is using a non-standard encoding or message header. Unfortunately, those cases are very common.
Although LyX is not your typical word processor, it is classified as WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean). There are two main packages you will need to have in order to function with Arabic. Namely LyX and ArabTeX.
Whether ArabTeX is bundled with teTeX packages may vary and depend on your distribution. For instance, Mandrake calls it 'tetex-latex-arab' whereas Debian simply calls it 'arabtex'. Check with your distribution.
Once you have both installed, create ~/.lyxrc with the following contents:
\rtl true
\kbmap true
\kbmap_primary null
\kbmap_secondary arabic
\bind "F12" "language Arabic"
\language_auto_begin false
\language_auto_end false
\language_command_begin "\begin{arabtext}"
\language_command_end "\end{arabtext}"
\language_package "\usepackage{arabtex,iso88596}\setcode{iso8859-6}"
\screen_font_encoding iso8859-6
\screen_font_encoding_menu iso8859-1
\screen_font_roman "-*-tahoma" [7]
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Note that you can switch between English and Arabic using the F12 key.